Challenge
In a small business setup, where NetSuite is used, changing accounting system/software might seem easy. However in reality, the job is cumbersome as it involves a huge amount of data and information about the company. The company for which we were providing the service of NetSuite to Xero migration had around 1.25 lacs of accounting and financial transactions in the NetSuite software. All these crucial data are confidential as well, so there is another challenge in keeping the safety of the information during the migration process. There are risks in migrating data as well as any change or error in transferring data can affect the financials of the company. On top of that, data from NetSuite has to be redefined before transferring to Xero. Yet the most challenging this was to reconcile the sales tax transactions and the inventory of the firm.
Solution
To start the migration process, we first categorized the different types of data. For example, we segregated the accounting data, analytical data, and the customer related data. After segregating, we started the importing process Using CSV file format from the spreadsheets. The data which couldn’t be transferred, we had to manually type those data into Xero platform. There are many reports on NetSuite and on Xero for the migration process which we follow. To avoid any kind of duplication, we always import the bills and the invoices before we import contacts to Xero from NetSuite. Once this is done, we enter the recent transactions which are not recorded in the NetSuite software. We had to do this entire process manually and we follow a chronological sequence for this. After the entire data was imported and stored in Xero, we reconciled the inventory and sales tax transactions. Finally, we did an analytical check to see how the business was performing and then ended the process by doing reviewing of profit & loss and Balance sheet work for periods and other such details required for your business. The entire process we completed using five resources.
Results
To our success, the whole process took us a short time of 45 days for transferring 1.25 lacs of transactions with zero errors. All the business and accounting data were transferred from NetSuite to Xero efficiently and effectively.