Outgrowing MYOB or Xero: Moving to Business Central, NetSuite or Odoo

The short answer

Moving from MYOB or Xero to an ERP (enterprise resource planning system, one system that runs accounting, stock, purchasing and operations together) is a redesign, not a copy. You choose the conversion date, redesign the chart of accounts and the way you report, set up each entity, decide how much history to bring, bring across balances, open items and stock, then check the ERP against MYOB or Xero before you switch.

The data itself is rarely the hard part. The hard part is the decisions: how the accounts and reporting dimensions are laid out, how entities trade with each other, how stock is costed, how GST lands on the BAS, and what happens to payroll and every app that used to connect to MYOB or Xero. This guide walks through each so you know what to ask before you sign anything.

Signs you have outgrown MYOB or Xero

MYOB and Xero are very good at what they are built for. A business outgrows them when the work around them starts to cost more than the systems themselves. These are the signs we see most.

• Several entities and a consolidation spreadsheet. A trading company, a property trust and maybe an overseas subsidiary, each in its own file. Every month somebody exports the numbers and builds group reports by hand, and intercompany loans never quite agree.
• Stock in more than one place. Warehouses, vans, branches or consignment stock, with transfers between them tracked outside the accounting system.
• Manufacturing or assembly. Bills of materials, work in progress and labour costs that the accounting system cannot hold, so the cost of goods sold is an estimate.
• Approvals by email. Purchase orders, bills and expenses approved by somebody replying to an email, with no record in the system of who approved what.
• Too many connected apps. Inventory in one app, job costing in another, approvals in a third, reporting in a fourth. Each sync is a place where data goes missing or doubles up.
• Reporting that needs more than two tracking categories. You want to report by branch, by product line, by project and by salesperson at once, and Xero allows two active tracking categories.

One of these on its own can often be solved with an app. When three or four turn up together, the business is usually ready for an ERP.

Business Central, NetSuite and Odoo in plain terms

These are the three ERPs Australian businesses leaving MYOB or Xero most often consider. All three can run accounting, stock, purchasing and sales in one place, and all three have an Australian setup with GST and BAS reporting. They differ mainly in how they are sold, how they are hosted and how they handle groups of companies.

None of them is the right answer for every business. The better question is which one fits your entities, your stock and your processes, and who will support you after go live. A strong local partner often matters more than the brand.

Six decisions to make before anything moves

1. The conversion date. The start of a financial year is cleanest. The start of a BAS quarter is the next best. Mid-quarter works, but the first BAS then comes from two systems.
2. The entity structure. Which companies, trusts and partnerships go into the ERP, and which, if any, stay where they are.
3. The chart of accounts and the reporting dimensions. What the accounts are, and what moves out of the accounts into dimensions or segments.
4. How much history. Opening balances only, balances plus open items, monthly totals for comparison, or full transactions.
5. The stock costing method. How each type of stock will be valued in the ERP, and whether that matches what MYOB or Xero and your inventory app did.
6. What happens to payroll and the connected apps. Which stay, which are replaced by the ERP, and how each one will connect.

The migration steps, in order

An ERP project has more moving parts than a move between two small business systems, but the data migration inside it follows the same broad path.

1. Review what you have. Every MYOB or Xero file, every entity, the tracking categories and jobs in use, the tax codes, the stock, and every app that sends data in or takes it out.
2. Tidy the source files up to the conversion date. Reconcile every bank and card account, clear invoices and bills that are not really owed, and agree intercompany balances between entities.
3. Design the ERP chart of accounts and dimensions. Map every MYOB or Xero account and tracking category to its new home.
4. Set up tax. Each old tax code mapped to an ERP tax setting that reports to the same BAS labels.
5. Prepare the master data. Customers, suppliers, items, locations and price lists, deduplicated and on one consistent list.
6. Bring across balances, open items and stock. Opening balances per entity, open invoices and bills, stock quantities and values per location, and any history you chose to keep.
7. Reconcile the ERP to MYOB or Xero. Trial balance per entity, aged receivables and payables, bank balances, stock value against the balance sheet, and GST for the same period.
8. Test with real work. Run a sample of real orders, bills, receipts and stock movements through the ERP before go live.
9. Cut over at the period end, then close the first month in the ERP. Treat the first month end and the first BAS as part of the project.

Where it gets complicated: redesigning the chart of accounts

In MYOB and Xero, many businesses report by creating more accounts. Sales Perth, Sales Sydney, Sales Online. Wages Perth, Wages Sydney. Over the years the chart of accounts grows to hundreds of lines because it is doing two jobs: holding the accounts and holding the reporting splits.

An ERP separates those jobs. The chart of accounts holds what the money is, such as sales, wages or rent. Dimensions in Business Central, segments such as department, class and location in NetSuite, and analytic accounts in Odoo hold where it belongs, such as branch, product line or project. One Sales account tagged by branch replaces three Sales accounts.

• Tracking categories become dimensions or segments. Xero tracking categories and MYOB categories and jobs each need a decision: become a dimension, become a project, or be retired.
• Split accounts have to be folded together. Sales Perth and Sales Sydney become one account with a branch tag, and the opening balances and any history have to be tagged the same way.
• Every entity should share one chart. Group reporting is far simpler when each entity uses the same accounts. Entities that drifted apart in MYOB or Xero have to be brought onto one list.
• Required tags have to be decided. If every expense must carry a branch, the ERP can enforce it, but history brought across without a branch will then fail or sit in a blank bucket.

Here is what getting it wrong looks like. A business copies its Xero chart of accounts into the ERP as it is, with all the branch accounts, and also sets up a branch dimension. Six months in, half the team codes sales to Sales Perth and the other half codes them to Sales with the Perth tag. The branch report now shows Perth at half its real size, and the board pack has to be rebuilt by hand, which is exactly what the ERP was meant to stop.

Where it gets complicated: several entities and intercompany

Many businesses move to an ERP because they run several entities. All three ERPs can hold several companies and produce group reports, but the setup decides whether that works.

• Each entity keeps its own ABN and its own BAS. Group reporting in the ERP does not merge the GST of separate entities. Each one still lodges as it does now, unless the group is registered for GST as a GST group.
• Intercompany balances must agree before the move. A loan of one amount in the company and a different amount in the trust will not eliminate in consolidation. Agree every intercompany balance at the conversion date first.
• Intercompany trading needs rules. When one entity sells to another, the ERP can create the matching bill on the other side, but the accounts, tax treatment and pricing for that have to be decided.
• Overseas entities add currency. A New Zealand or Singapore subsidiary reports in its own currency and is translated for group reports. The exchange rate approach has to be agreed with your accountant.

Where it gets complicated: opening balances and how much history

An ERP is stricter than MYOB or Xero. Every transaction usually carries more required information, such as dimensions, locations and posting rules, so history brought across has to carry it too.

For that reason, most businesses bring less detail than they expect: opening balances at the conversion date, every open invoice and bill, and monthly totals for the last one or two years so reports can compare this year with last. The detailed transactions stay in MYOB or Xero, kept read only for the records and for the auditor. If you do want full transaction history, every year brought across must reconcile, entity by entity, and the effort grows quickly.

Where it gets complicated: inventory and costing methods

Stock is often the reason for the move, and it is where the numbers most often fail to agree on day one.

• Costing methods differ. Business Central offers FIFO (first in, first out), LIFO, average, standard and specific costing. Odoo offers standard, average and FIFO, set by product category. NetSuite has its own set of costing methods. MYOB and many Xero inventory apps use average cost. Changing method changes the value of the same stock.
• Stock has to be counted into each location. Quantities by warehouse, van or branch, with values that add up to the stock figure on the balance sheet at the conversion date.
• Units of measure and item codes need tidying. The same item bought by the carton and sold by the unit, or listed twice under slightly different codes, has to be sorted out before it reaches the ERP.
• Manufacturing adds bills of materials and work in progress. Half-finished jobs at the conversion date need a decision: finish them in the old system, or bring them across with their costs so far.

Where it gets complicated: GST and BAS in the new system

All three ERPs can report GST for an Australian BAS. Business Central has an Australian version with GST posting setup and BAS reporting. NetSuite provides Australian tax reporting, including the BAS, through its Australia and New Zealand localisation. Odoo has an Australian localisation with a BAS report and GST rates mapped to the BAS labels.

The catch is that the tax setup is new. In MYOB or Xero you picked a tax code on each line. In an ERP, GST often comes from a combination of settings on the customer or supplier, the item and the account. A wrong combination raises no error. It quietly sends a sale to the wrong BAS label, every period.

• Standard treatments. Taxable sales, GST-free sales, exports (G2), capital purchases (G10) and input-taxed items each have to land on the same labels as before.
• Special codes. Custom codes from MYOB or Xero, and industry taxes such as Wine Equalisation Tax, luxury car tax or fuel tax credits, need their own decision in the ERP.
• GST groups and branches. If your entities are a GST group or report GST by branch, the ERP has to be set up to report the same way.

Where it gets complicated: payroll usually stays separate

MYOB and Xero both run Australian payroll. Many businesses assume the ERP will too. Often it does not.

Business Central does not include Australian payroll as standard, and the payroll built into NetSuite is for the United States. Australian businesses on either one usually keep a separate payroll product, then post each pay run into the ERP as a journal. Odoo has an Australian payroll module, which Odoo says supports Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 from version 19, but test it against your awards, allowances and leave rules before relying on it.

If payroll stays separate, decide how wages, PAYG withholding, super and leave land in the ERP, including which dimensions each pay line carries. If payroll is moving too, the safest time is 1 July, so year to date figures do not have to be carried across mid-year.

Where it gets complicated: integrations to rebuild

Every app that talked to MYOB or Xero stops when you leave. Point of sale, ecommerce, job management, expense tools, payment gateways, bank feeds, and the reporting tools that read your data. Some will connect to the ERP, some will be replaced by it, and some will need a custom integration.

List every connection before the project starts, not in the last week. For each one decide whether it stays, goes, or is replaced, and when it switches over. Switch them all at the conversion date so nothing is posted twice or missed.

Implementation partner and data migration are two jobs

An ERP is usually set up by an implementation partner, who designs the processes, configures the system and trains your team. Moving the data from MYOB or Xero is a separate job, and partners vary in how much of it they take on.

Some partners handle the migration fully. Others set up the ERP and expect you to hand over clean, mapped data in their templates. Before you sign, ask who maps the chart of accounts, who cleans the master data, who brings across the stock and history, and who proves the trial balance agrees. If nobody owns the reconciliation, it tends to land on the finance manager in the week before go live.

Parallel running and cutover at a period end

Cut over at the end of a period, ideally a financial year or a BAS quarter. The old system closes cleanly on that date, the ERP starts fresh the next day, and each BAS comes from one system.

Some businesses run both systems side by side for a month to compare the results. It gives confidence, but it doubles the data entry, so keep it short and decide in advance what has to match for you to stop. Once you switch, lock MYOB or Xero as at the conversion date and keep it read only for the records.

If any of these apply, our migration services cover the planning and the data move at a fixed price, quoted before work starts: MYOB to Business Central, MYOB to NetSuite, MYOB to Odoo, Xero to Business Central, Xero to NetSuite and Xero to Odoo. We work alongside your implementation partner, or on our own, for businesses across Australia, from Perth to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. See all our migration services.

Questions about moving from MYOB or Xero to an ERP