We hear people say they have to juggle their conversion to Xero to coincide with the end of quarter or financial year. That is true if you are using conversion balances, but as we do full transactional history with open invoices and bills you can convert at any time and continue in Xero where you left off in Reckon or MYOB.

Why now?

More history – Because we convert current plus previous financial year of data, at the moment you can get history going back to 1 July 2014 (2016 & 2015 financial years). If you leave it until after 1 July 2016 you will only receive history back to 1 July 2015 (2017 & 2016 financial years).

Gain time efficiencies – You can immediately take advantage of Xero’s great time-saving functions right now. Smart Reconciliation auto-suggest and Recode & redo functions means you can start gaining efficiencies straight away. You also get the advantage of Bank feeds, no more tax software required, every increasing enhancements and integration into Xero practice management software.

Start the audit trail – Changes made to data in Xero have an audit trail associated with them. Even a few months of audit trail information will make your end of year job easier. The way we convert the data means you can keep working in Xero from where you left off in Reckon and do the end of financial year in Xero instead.

Work smarter by avoiding a peak time – EOFY has so many tasks associated with it, why add to your workload by delaying a conversion to Xero until then. It makes much more sense to have Xero prepared now so it is one less thing to worry about at the start of the financial year. You will receive a detailed analysis of the conversion data in your Action Checklist so you’ll be well prepared with the FY data when the peak period hits. You can leverage Xero payroll functions, lodge employee summaries online, integrate with Xero’s new Tax services – the list goes on.

 

Here are some other factors for consideration when deciding on the best time to move onto Xero:

Payruns

If payroll is involved we suggest that you get the next pay run out of the way and then convert to Xero. Obviously the business wants to be comfortable with the data in Xero and how to conduct a pay run prior to actually having to do it.

By allowing the maximum time possible before the next pay run you’ll avoid last minute panic setting in, along with the accompanying flood of questions that must be answered “right now!”.

Invoicing

It may seem like I am stating the obvious but while the actual conversion is taking place there will be a period of time where the business:

1. Cannot do any invoicing until the Xero org becomes available  or
2. Needs to invoice out of their old software and then manually reproduce these transactions in Xero once the org is available.

Depending on the estimated time it will take for the functioning Xero org to become available, the business needs to decide which of the above options results in less work post-conversion while continuing to maintain cash flow.

It is best to allow up to three business days for MYOB conversions, five business days for Reckon, though most conversions are completed much quicker than that.

Reconciliation

If the source file has not been recently reconciled it is our suggestion that you convert to Xero and then take care of unreconciled transactions in Xero as long as they are after the conversion data start date. The reasons are twofold:

1. It is very quick and easy to reconcile in Xero
2. The more reconciliation that is done in Xero, the more quickly it collects information for prefilling fields resulting in even faster reconciliation.

BAS preparation

It is true that if you are doing account balances only you need to time that with the end of quarter. However keep in mind that is also the time for BAS statement preparation so you don’t want to be doing too many of both of these at the same time!

If you do a conversion with full transactional history then you can convert at any time, and can select a date that will minimise disruption to your clients business.

Choosing the best time to convert

So the timing of moving a client to Xero does not have to be an either/or.  You can choose the method of conversion and timing to suit the business rather than force fitting around the end of a financial period.

As far as Jet Convert is concerned, any time is good for us!

I would love to hear your comments and feedback below.

Wendy