Why the change?
I had been using Sage for a few years, preceeding this with the manual spreadsheet route. The benefits of using a professional ‘grown up’ product were evident. The setup and learning curve took some time but it helped me keep an eye on the business finances, until…
The disaster of wanting to move to the cloud
I am still to this day flabbergasted at the response I received when I called Sage to enquire about moving the business accounts from the desktop version of Sage Instant Accounts to the ‘cloud’ equivelant. I naturally questioned ( to be safe ) that I could easily migrate my years of accounts data to the new ‘cloud’ platform. After all I had received numerous direct mail campaigns and email campaigns with incentives to drop my desktop software for their new all bells and whistle ‘cloud’ solution.
So I called the sales team provided by Sage and asked the very question. “So I presume that I can migrate my Instant Accounts data from my desktop database to a new cloud install?”.
The answer from the Sage sales agent was… are you sitting down?
“I am afraid that isn’t possible!”
I won’t put into words my verbal response at that time or will I be able to recall the milliseconds it took to put the phone down and never ever give Sage a second of my attention again. I’m still in shock that a business selling the ‘so-called’ benefits of moving from a desktop software product to the same company’s ‘cloud’ equivilent had no process in place or any ability to provide the customer with a seamless and efficient shift from one to the other. Instead Sage fell over, never to stand in frof of me again, especially because…
A competitor of Sage to the rescue
It is really impressive when a competitor of the software you have been using, the same business that had no method of migrating my desktop data to their ‘cloud’ product can actually do the very migration you wanted, but into their product.
Xero is a new kid on the block in the ‘cloud’ accounting world, but wow, have they got it right. I was actually able to use the database from my Sage Instant Accounts install and process this through a migration tool and have my new Xero online account setup with the last 2 years of accounting. Now that is slick. What was even more slick was that it worked beautifully, just like the product in general does.
What a product. Xero is the business!
No more manual entering of transaction after transaction into the software, saving hours and hours and hours. Xero provides a live bank feed which is a sinch to update and provides the software with all the business transactions, ready for reconciling and reporting.
The verdict
If you are looking for an accounting system or considering Xero I cannot recommend this software highly enough. Everything about it is superb, even down to the payroll.
Keeping on top of the business finances has become enjoyable thanks to Xero. Now who would have thought?
Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash
