Accounting System Setup and Migration: Common Questions

They work right up to the point where more than one person edits the file, or where you start issuing numbered documents that must be traced back later. At that stage the risk is not formula accuracy but the absence of any record of who changed what and when, which is precisely what a reviewer looks for.

If the team sits in different places or an outside firm keeps the books, simultaneous access is the reason online wins outright. Where connectivity at the site is unreliable or policy requires data to stay in-house, an installed system still answers. The question to ask is who needs the file open at the same time on a normal day.

Buying ahead usually ends with less than half the features used, full maintenance paid, and a team slowed down by steps it does not need. What works better is choosing something that exports its data completely and moving when the need is real — which makes export capability more important than a long feature list.

At minimum it must issue sales documents carrying every legally required field, keep input and output tax separated by period, handle withholding with its certificates, and export the monthly tax reports without retyping. Those four are what genuinely shorten the month-end.

Start from the standard skeleton and change only what management genuinely needs shown separately, such as sales channel or product line. Splitting accounts too finely on day one leaves the person posting hesitant and getting it wrong often. Ask instead what the one-page monthly report should look like, then design backwards from it.

Document numbering, the inventory costing method, and the accounting period. Changing any of those after transactions exist usually means rebuilding the database, so settle them before real posting begins. We normally have clients post ten genuine transactions as a trial before going fully live.

Carry them from a set of accounts that has already been reviewed, and attach working papers that break receivables, payables and stock down item by item rather than posting a single lump. Without the item-level detail, future settlements cannot be applied against anything.

Even with two or three people, keep the right to post separate from the right to approve and to amend past entries. At the very least leave the change log switched on, since it is the only thing that can say when a figure moved and who moved it — and auditors ask about it almost every time.

Mid-year moves are possible and sometimes necessary, but the cut-off date must be fixed and the books closed up to it first. What causes damage is running both systems in parallel without a cut-off, so that at year end nobody can say which set of figures is the real one.

Usually not. Moving balances with their item-level detail is enough to carry on working, while the history is kept as readable, indexed files. Attempting to load every past year into the new system routinely takes several times longer than planned for very little gain.

With decent planning, usually none: close at the end of a working day and start issuing from the new system the next morning. What must be ready beforehand is the continuing document numbering and pre-checked templates, so no customer receives a document with fields missing.

Begin with a formal written request naming exactly what is needed and referring to the records that belong to the company itself. In parallel, prepare to build the opening position from what you already hold — filed returns, reviewed accounts, bank statements — so the work does not stall while waiting.

The core is separating gross sales, the platform's charges, and the amount actually settled to the bank, because those three almost never match. Recording only what hit the bank understates revenue and affects tax immediately, so set the posting method to capture all three from the first month.

It pays off once the monthly volume makes manual entry cost more than half a day. Just be clear that importing is not reconciling: someone still has to match each line to its document. The real gain is fewer typing errors, not fewer reviewers.

Yes, provided roles are bounded: sales only issues sales documents, purchasing only enters supplier invoices, and adjustments stay with the bookkeeper. Training on the company's own real transactions works better than walking through every menu in the system.

Automatic backups on a regular cycle, stored somewhere other than the main system, and — most importantly — a restore actually tested at least once a year. A copy that has never been restored is a copy you do not yet know works, and this is the most overlooked point of all.

It normally covers designing the chart of accounts, configuring documents and tax settings, carrying in opening balances, running one trial cycle, and role-specific training. The software licence itself is paid by the business directly to the vendor.

A small business with clean opening data is usually a few weeks. Anything with a large stock list or several sales channels runs longer, because the time goes into preparing the opening data rather than configuring the software. We give a timeframe after seeing the first data set.

The system makes posting faster and retrieval easier, but it does not replace the judgement calls in classifying entries, the period-end adjustments, or the statutory sign-off. Many businesses therefore post daily themselves and keep us for the close and the annual work.

Quoted per case from monthly transaction volume, the number of locations, how many sales channels must be connected, and the state of the opening data. The first three describe configuration complexity; the last is usually what makes two businesses of identical size differ most in hours.