Expert Reckon to Xero Migration for Australian businesses

All of them — Reckon One (cloud), Reckon Accounts Hosted, Reckon Accounts Desktop (including legacy Reckon-branded QuickBooks QBW/QBB files), and Reckon APS. Desktop and Hosted files require an extraction step before the Xero build begins; we handle that as part of the project scope.

No. Full historical migration is the default — customers, suppliers, invoices, bills, payments, journals and inventory history. The one variable is how far back we go on line-by-line transactions versus summary trial balance; that is a cost-vs-reporting question we scope at the audit. Your accountant keeps comparison data either way.

Mid-year payroll needs the most planning of any Reckon-to-Xero project. The cleanest option is a 1 July cutover — employee YTD balances reset and STP2 starts fresh in Xero Payroll. If a mid-year cutover is required we run both systems in parallel for one pay cycle with proper YTD bring-over so STP2 filings stay accurate. We scope both options with your bookkeeper at the audit.

Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 is the ATO's current payroll reporting standard — disaggregated income types, multiple income streams, updated field requirements. Xero Payroll has full STP2 support built in. We configure and test STP2 as part of every payroll migration so your first pay run in Xero reports correctly to the ATO.

It adds urgency but not complexity. Desktop files (QBW/QBB) are well-understood — we extract via IIF and CSV export, clean duplicates, and build the Xero organisation from the cleaned data. The main consideration is not waiting until your Desktop install stops working; migrating from a live, supported install is cleaner than recovering from a broken one.

Xero uses tracking categories instead of classes. During the chart-of-accounts mapping stage we work with you and your accountant to translate your Reckon class structure into Xero tracking categories — so your profit-and-loss reporting by department, project or location works the same way after cutover.

Reckon stays as your live system throughout the entire project. The parallel-run phase means both systems are reconciling the same transactions for at least a week before cutover. If anything does not line up we stop, fix it in the Xero sandbox and re-test before proceeding. There is no blind cutover and no rollback needed — Reckon is still live until the figures match.

That is a fair question and the scoping call is the right place to ask it. If your accountant or bookkeeper works in both platforms we will walk through the practical differences for your business type. We run Reckon-to-MYOB migrations too. We do not push Xero if MYOB is the better fit for your team.