Systems & Migration Advisory
Setting up, redesigning, or moving an accounting system, QuickBooks Online included, with the accounting worked out before the software.
A new system doesn’t fix the accounting. If the chart of accounts, the opening balances, or the workflows are wrong going in, the new system reproduces the same problems in a nicer interface.
So we work out the accounting first. How does the business earn and spend? What has to be reported by entity, job, or location? What has to reconcile to what? Then we set up or migrate the system to match. That includes QuickBooks Online setup and QuickBooks migrations. Before anyone starts working in the new system, the converted balances get reconciled back to the old one.
What This Typically Involves
- Accounting system setup and redesign
- Migrations between accounting systems
- Chart of accounts restructuring
- Opening balance validation
- General ledger and subledger mapping
- Reconciliation after conversion
- Reporting rebuilt and the process documented
Signs This Is the Right Work
- The chart of accounts was inherited from a template or a prior owner and no longer describes the business
- A migration is planned, and no one has decided how the balances and history will come across
- The last system change moved the transactions but not the accounting, and the numbers have not agreed since
- Reports have to be rebuilt in a spreadsheet because the system was never structured to produce them
- Growth has added entities, locations, or job costing that the current setup was not built for
- Someone wants to automate a process that does not work correctly by hand
What You End Up With
- A chart of accounts and subledger structure that describe how the business runs
- Opening balances that are supported and reconcile to the prior system at the conversion date
- Historical detail carried across, or reconstructed where it was never reliable
- Reports produced from the system rather than assembled around it
- A documented process that holds after go-live
Most System Problems Aren’t Software Problems
A chart of accounts copied from a template. Opening balances typed in without support. Bank rules written to clear the feed instead of coding transactions correctly. A close that depends on one person remembering the steps. A new platform doesn’t fix any of that. It all comes across with the data.
The setup should follow from how the business runs and reports. We settle those questions before anything gets configured.
What a Migration Has to Carry
Moving the transactions is the easy part. The opening balances have to come across too, along with the detail behind receivables, payables, payroll, and fixed assets, and every reconciliation and report that was built on the old system. All of it has to tie back to what it was.
We map the general ledger and subledgers and validate the opening balances at the conversion date. Then the converted balances get reconciled to the old system before the new one becomes the books of record. If the history was never reliable, we reconstruct it instead of copying it over.
Setup and Implementation, QuickBooks Online Included
QuickBooks Online fits most small and midsize businesses, and most of our setup and migration work is there. Some larger or more specialized companies need something else. The choice should come from what the accounting has to do: multiple entities, job costing, inventory, the reports you need, and how much volume the system has to handle. Sometimes you don’t need a new system at all, and we’ll say so.
Setup covers the chart of accounts, opening balances, bank feeds and rules, classes and locations, and the reports you’ll run the business from. It’s built for your business, not from a template.
Process Before Automation
A system change is a good time to fix the workflows around the accounting instead of carrying them over. How transactions get into the ledger, how the close runs, who reviews what, and what’s written down all get looked at along with the setup.
Sometimes the honest answer is that the process should be fixed rather than automated. Automating a broken process makes it a fast broken process. Where the close has steps worth automating, accounting automation comes after the process is sound. For process work that isn’t tied to a system change, see process and controls.
Who This Is For
- Growing companies implementing their first full accounting system, or replacing one they have outgrown
- Businesses moving between platforms, including QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online and to or from other systems
- Multi-entity and multi-location operations whose structure the current system was never built for
- Owners and controllers who inherited a configuration and need it redesigned rather than patched
When This May Not Be Necessary
A system that already fits, with a chart of accounts that describes the business, balances that reconcile, and reports the owner uses, does not need advisory. It needs to be kept that way, which is monthly bookkeeping. If the structure is fine and the history is not, the work is accounting reconstruction first. And if the system is sound but the close is slow, the answer is usually process and controls or automation rather than a new platform.