Reckon Accounts Enterprise to Xero Migration for a Professional Services Firm
Perth professional services firm migrated from Reckon Accounts Enterprise to Xero. Seven years of transaction history migrated. Payroll records for 28 employees migrated including leave balances and STP history. Five integrations rebuilt using Xero API. Management dashboards connected in real time. Completed in 11 weeks without disrupting payroll or client invoicing.
Professional services firm: 28 staff, consulting and advisory services across Western Australia
A Perth-based management consulting firm providing advisory and project management services to government and corporate clients. The business had been running Reckon Accounts Enterprise for seven years. Payroll for 28 employees was processed fortnightly, with a mix of full-time, part-time, and contract staff.
The business was straightforward in accounting terms: a single entity, service-based revenue with time-and-materials billing and some fixed-fee engagements. Inventory was not a factor. The complexity was in the payroll: multiple pay rates, flexible leave arrangements, several employees with salary sacrifice and novated lease arrangements, and STP Phase 2 reporting.
The business had five external connections to Reckon Accounts. Their project management tool synced billable hours to Reckon for invoicing. Their CRM pushed new client records to Reckon for AR. An expense management app exported approved expenses to Reckon as AP. Their bank feeds ran through a third-party aggregator. A weekly payroll summary exported to a dashboard tool used by the HR manager.
What needed to change
The decision to migrate had been building for two years. The trigger was a combination of factors: the management team increasingly working remotely and experiencing the friction of the Reckon Hosted session, a new operations manager who had come from a Xero environment and found the comparison unfavourable, and a requirement from a new enterprise client for e-invoicing that Reckon Accounts could not support natively.
The payroll migration was the primary concern. The HR manager had three specific worries: leave balances being wrong (two employees had significant accumulated long service leave), STP history not transferring correctly (the business had been STP Phase 2 compliant for eight months), and salary sacrifice arrangements for four employees not replicating accurately in Xero Payroll.
The second concern was the project management integration. Billable hours from the project tool fed directly into Reckon for client invoicing. The integration ran three times daily and was central to the billing workflow. Any disruption to this during or after migration would delay client invoices.
The business had a firm timeline constraint: migration needed to complete before the end of the financial year to simplify the tax year close. That gave them 11 weeks from project start.
What we built
Migrated to Xero with seven years of financial history. Payroll for 28 employees migrated with all leave balances, STP history, and salary sacrifice arrangements confirmed correct. Five integrations rebuilt using Xero API. Real-time management dashboards connected to Xero. Live before end of financial year.
Reckon Data Extraction & Financial Migration
Full extraction from the Reckon Accounts company file via ODBC: chart of accounts, 340 client accounts, 280 supplier records, seven years of transaction history, and open AR and AP balances. ETL pipeline in Python loading to Xero via Xero API. Two test migrations run before production.
Payroll Migration
Payroll records for all 28 employees migrated: tax file numbers, employment types, pay rates, allowances, deductions, salary sacrifice arrangements for four employees, and novated lease deductions. Leave balances migrated by leave type: annual, personal, long service, and RDO for applicable employees. STP Year-to-Date figures migrated for the current financial year. Two employees with complex long service leave calculations validated directly with the HR manager before production cutover.
Integration Rebuild
All five integrations rebuilt on the Xero API: project management to Xero invoicing (time entry to draft invoice), CRM to Xero AR (new client record sync), expense management to Xero AP (approved expense to bill), bank feed configuration (moved to Xero native bank feeds), and payroll summary to HR dashboard (Xero Payroll API).
Management Dashboards
Three management dashboards built connecting directly to the Xero API: revenue and WIP (work in progress by client and project), cash flow (actual vs forecast with debtor aging overlay), and payroll cost analysis (by employee type and department). All three live at go-live. The HR dashboard previously fed by the weekly Reckon export now updates daily from Xero Payroll.
How it works
Reckon Environment Review
Reckon Accounts company file reviewed via ODBC connection. Seven years of data volumes confirmed. All five integrations mapped. Payroll configuration documented: pay rates, leave types, salary sacrifice arrangements, and STP setup. Full scope confirmed in week one.
Payroll Configuration & Leave Mapping
Xero Payroll configured before data migration: pay categories, leave types, deduction categories, and salary sacrifice arrangements set up and confirmed correct. Two employees with long service leave had their balances independently calculated and confirmed by the HR manager before migration started.
Data Extraction & ETL Build
Python ETL pipeline built for Reckon ODBC extraction and Xero API load. Financial data, client and supplier records, and transaction history all handled. Payroll migration data prepared separately with extra validation layer for the 28 employee records.
Test Migration & Payroll Validation
First test migration at week 5. Finance director validated chart of accounts and opening balances. HR manager validated all 28 employee records: pay rates, leave balances, salary sacrifice, and YTD payroll figures. Two discrepancies found in long service leave calculations — corrected in the ETL transformation rules before second test migration.
Integration Rebuild
All five integrations rebuilt on Xero API. Project management integration tested with actual billable time entries from the project tool. Bank feeds migrated to Xero native bank feeds. HR dashboard connected to Xero Payroll API. All five tested before go-live.
Go Live & First Payroll
End-of-month go-live at end of May, five weeks before financial year end. First fortnightly payroll processed in Xero Payroll on day three. HR manager confirmed all leave balances and payslip figures correct. STP lodgement confirmed correct by end of week one. Reckon Accounts file archived in read-only mode.
Measurable outcomes
We had put off the Reckon migration for two years because of the payroll. Three of our senior staff have long service leave calculations that go back a long way, and we could not afford to get those wrong. HELLO PEOPLE mapped every leave balance, had our HR manager validate each one before going anywhere near production, and delivered the first payroll in Xero without a single error. That built trust in the whole project.
How we delivered it
Reckon Review & Payroll Config
2 weeksCompany file reviewed. Payroll configuration mapped. Xero Payroll set up and confirmed before data migration starts.
ETL Build & Test Migration
3 weeksPython ETL pipeline built. First test migration. Finance and HR validation. Payroll discrepancies identified and corrected.
Integration Rebuild
4 weeksAll five integrations rebuilt on Xero API and tested. Dashboards built and connected.
Final Migration & Go Live
2 weeksProduction migration. First payroll processed. STP lodgement confirmed. Post-migration support.
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