QuickBooks to Xero conversion for businesses in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, from QuickBooks Online and its payroll to an old Desktop file. We flatten sub-accounts into one Xero account list, turn classes into tracking categories and set your Xero conversion date correctly, so the opening balances agree with the invoices behind them.
Built here. Your data stays here.
Xero accepts nearly everything QuickBooks holds, but on stricter terms. This is what changes on the way across.
How QuickBooks holds it today.
How the same data sits in Xero.
Recurring invoices, bank rules and report layouts are rebuilt in Xero rather than copied. The scope lists each one.
What actually comes across
Moving the balances is the easy part. The work is the history: the invoices still open, the codes that do not exist in Xero, the attachments nobody wants to lose, and the customer records that have drifted over years. All of it has to arrive reconciled, not approximately.
What has to move
Codes mapped to their Xero equivalents, records deduplicated on rules you approve, then both systems run side by side until the balances agree. Cutover happens on a window you choose.
Talk to us about your conversionWhat you get
Xero is stricter than QuickBooks in a handful of places. Each tab below is one of them, and what we change so your data fits.
Xero has no sub-accounts. Every QuickBooks sub-account becomes an account of its own, and we set up report groups so your profit and loss still rolls up the way you are used to reading it.
Xero also insists that every account name is unique, not just every code. Two QuickBooks accounts that are both called Sundry get clear, separate names before they load.
QuickBooks keeps customers and suppliers apart, often with their own numbering. Xero has a single contact list, and a contact number can be used only once across all of it. Where a customer and a supplier share a number, one gets a prefix so neither is lost.
Xero works out whether a contact is a customer or a supplier from the invoices and bills against it. That is one more reason the history has to arrive complete.
QuickBooks classes and locations become Xero tracking categories. Xero allows two active tracking categories at a time.
If you use classes, locations and a third reporting tag in QuickBooks today, we agree with you which two carry on as tracking categories and how the third is reported. Better to settle that before the move than after the first month of reports.
Xero opening balances sit on the first day of the month you start in Xero. Balances at 30 June are a 1 July conversion, not a June one. When the month is wrong, Xero refuses the opening balances, and the error it gives points somewhere else.
Open invoices and bills load before the balances, so every receivable and payable in Xero matches the documents that make it up.
QuickBooks products and services become Xero items. Xero lets only tracked stock post to an inventory account, so if you will not track stock in Xero, your stock accounts are set up as ordinary current assets instead.
Where QuickBooks rounded a unit price, Xero recalculates quantity times price and can reject the line. We load the line total exactly as it was recorded, so no invoice changes by a cent.
QuickBooks payroll items become Xero earnings rates, deductions, leave types and reimbursements. A pay calendar is set up first, because every employee in Xero has to belong to one.
Year-to-date pay, tax and super go in as opening figures, so Single Touch Payroll reporting to the tax office continues without a gap.
A QuickBooks to Xero price depends on the edition you run, how many years you want in full detail, how much payroll history comes across and which apps need reconnecting.
We look at your edition, your sub-accounts, how you use classes and items, and your payroll setup. That is what the price is built on.
Clean-up, the Xero setup, the data load, the report checks and the cutover are covered by one price agreed up front.
More years of detail, or several apps reconnected to Xero, can be added as separate stages with their own price, after the core conversion is live.
Why HELLO PEOPLE
DIY spreadsheet migrations, vendor migration tools, and offshore migrators all promise to move your data. Here's how HELLO PEOPLE compares on the things that actually matter to an AU SMB owner.
| Concern | HELLO PEOPLE | DIY spreadsheets | Vendor migration tool | Offshore migrators |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data preserved end-to-end | 100% + validated at every step | Usually yes, no validation | Advertised complete, some fields drop | Depends on the vendor |
| Downtime during cutover | Zero. Parallel run + weekend cut | Days to weeks | Hours to days | Often days |
| AU BAS / GST / payroll fit | AU-native, understood | You own the risk | Usually generic | Variable |
| Pricing model | Fixed price, one-time | Your team's time forever | Per-record or flat fee | Per-hour + revisions |
| When something breaks | We own the fix, no charge | You own it | Support ticket queue | Time-zone gap |
| Data cleansing | Included in scope | Optional, often skipped | Usually not | Quoted separately |
| Post-cutover support | 30 days included, plan optional | None | Chat support tier | Depends on contract |
A Perth-based services group with 60+ staff moved off their legacy accounting stack to a modern cloud platform, taking multiple entities across in one coordinated cut. Chart of accounts consolidated, payroll continuity preserved through cutover, and BAS lodgement continued on time.
Read the full case studyWe had been putting off the switch for over a year. They made it painless, scoped it clearly, migrated everything, and our team was up and running in Xero within weeks. The data was cleaner than it had been in years.
A structured process so you know what is happening at each stage. No ambiguity, no surprises.
We check your edition and how you use classes, locations, items and sub-accounts, because those decide how the Xero organisation is built. The fixed-price scope comes out of that review.
Duplicate contacts, clashing account names and email fields holding two addresses or a person's name are fixed first. Xero rejects a whole contact when its email address is not valid.
Your account list, tax rates, tracking categories, pay calendar and user access are set up, with the conversion date on the first day of the month you start.
Contacts load first, then open invoices and bills, then conversion balances, then history. Every contact loads as active and old ones are archived at the end, because Xero will not attach history to an archived contact.
We read the trial balance, aged receivables and bank summary back out of Xero and compare them with QuickBooks on the same date. A report read back is proof. A count of records loaded is not.
Bank feeds start in Xero from the conversion date, so nothing overlaps with the history we loaded. QuickBooks stays read-only for lookups.
It is a fixed price, set after we have seen the file. The main drivers are your QuickBooks edition, how many years you want in full detail in Xero, payroll, and how many apps need reconnecting. There is no hourly billing.
About 2 to 4 weeks for most businesses. A QuickBooks Online Simple Start file moving to a Xero Starter plan is usually about 2 weeks. Several QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise companies with inventory and payroll history can take 4 to 6. The number of years you want in full detail makes the biggest difference.
Xero's standard conversion guidance covers full detail for the year before your conversion date. We can load more years than that when you need them, or bring older years across as monthly totals for each account. Either way, the QuickBooks file stays readable as an archive.
They become Xero tracking categories. Xero allows two active tracking categories, each with its own list of options, so a business that tags transactions three ways in QuickBooks has to choose which two to keep. We help you make that call before anything loads.
Yes. QuickBooks Online in every plan, QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier and Enterprise, hosted QuickBooks and files from 2014 and earlier. Desktop has no cloud connection, so its data is taken from the company file.
Yes. QuickBooks stays live right up to cutover. We pick the switch date with you, usually a month end, then run both systems side by side for a short check before QuickBooks goes read-only.
Yes. ServiceM8, Simpro, Tradify, Shopify, WooCommerce, Deputy, Employment Hero, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Power BI connections are rebuilt against Xero as part of the scope, so nothing still points at QuickBooks after the switch.
Our Australian team runs the conversion over encrypted connections. Logins are never stored in plain text, and the QuickBooks data is only ever read, never changed.
Where people go after QuickBooks varies, and we scope the move to whichever system you have chosen: Xero, MYOB AccountRight, MYOB Business, MYOB Acumatica, QuickBooks Online, Reckon, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage 50, Sage 300, Sage Intacct, Odoo, Zoho Books, FreshBooks, Saasu, SAP Business One, Oracle and Workday. If the one you have picked is a poor fit for how you actually work, we will say so before you have paid for a conversion into it.
The parts that decide the timeline are the same wherever you land: the chart of accounts, the general ledger, the customer and supplier master, open purchase orders and sales orders, opening balances and payroll history, and how much history you export out of the old system and import into the new one, rather than leave behind in a readable archive. Hosted files, local files and vendor exports each come out differently.
If you are looking because QuickBooks is too old, out of support or reaching end of life, that is a question of timing rather than whether. It is worth comparing the alternatives and moving away on your own schedule rather than on the one the vendor picks for you.
Sending your details…
You can stay on this page while we send it.
Tell us whether you run QuickBooks Online or Desktop, how you use classes and locations, how many people are on payroll, and when you want to start in Xero. We reply with a plan and a fixed price for the conversion.
Prefer a quick chat? Call 0425 531 127. We answer the phone in Perth.
Thanks for reaching out. We will get back to you within one business day.
See what else we do