Migration
The whole history where the old package will give it, and a proper trial balance where it will not
Murgese brings a company's chart, contacts, documents and every posting across from Xero or QuickBooks. Where the old package cannot export a history, it takes the trial balance properly instead. Both are checked before anything is written, and an import that does not reconcile does not happen.
Why the history is worth moving
The usual way to move accounting software is to post opening balances and leave the history behind. It works until the first question that needs last year: a customer disputing an invoice from March, a VAT enquiry, a comparative that does not agree, a bank item that was matched to something you can no longer see.
From that point on you are running two systems, one of which nobody wants to open.
So where the old package will hand over a history, Murgese moves it. Every posting arrives as a posting, every document as a document, and the ledger you end up with is one you can drill into as far back as the source went.
Not every package will. Zoho Books and VT Transaction+ hand over a trial balance and nothing more, and a client moved at a year end comes across that way whatever the package, which is how a practice usually does it. That route is built properly rather than tolerated, and it is the next section.
How it runs
Four steps, in order
Step one
Read the source
The company's data is read from Xero or QuickBooks: chart of accounts, contacts, documents and journal lines.
Step two
Map it
Accounts and tax treatments are mapped across. Anything the mapping cannot resolve is raised rather than guessed.
Step three
Check it
The documents are compared with the control accounts before a single row is written. A difference stops the import rather than being described afterwards.
Step four
Post it
The history is written into the Murgese ledger as ordinary transactions, in date order, in whole pence, and the same question is asked again of the rows being written.
An import that does not reconcile does not happen
Any tool can move data. What matters is whether you can tell that nothing was lost or quietly rounded, and when you are told. The comparison between the documents and the control accounts runs before anything is written, and a difference is a refusal rather than a note. Nothing is imported.
It names the rows: the documents whose outstanding figure came from a status word or from nothing at all, largest first, by number, contact and date. Two totals and a shrug leave you nowhere to start. Somebody who knows why the export is short can override it deliberately, and that acceptance is recorded on the migration rather than forgotten.
The same question is then put again inside the transaction, against the rows actually being written, and a difference there rolls the whole import back. A failure at that point can mean only one thing, which is that Murgese lost something between reading the file and writing the row.
When a trial balance is the only way in
Zoho Books and VT Transaction+ hand over a trial balance and nothing more, and a client moved at a year end comes across that way whatever they were on, which is how a practice usually does it. This route is built rather than tolerated.
- It reads the file the old package actually gives youA spreadsheet, .xlsx, .xlsm or .xls, as well as CSV. A workbook with more than one sheet asks which one, because guessing produces a plausible set of balances from the wrong period.
- It shows you what it readEvery line of the file, with what it matched and how. A match made on an account name is a guess that happened to work, and it is called one.
- It refuses over money that reached no accountA line whose code is not in this chart is declared rather than dropped, and the posting refuses, naming the lines and the amount. Accepting it is a deliberate act, and the acceptance goes into the audit entry with the lines themselves, because the question six months later is not whether somebody ticked a box, it is which balances were left out.
- A genuine difference can still go to suspenseA trial balance carried across by hand rarely balances to the penny first time, and blocking a whole conversion over a few pounds helps nobody. What it must not do is absorb them, so the difference goes to a suspense account you can see and clear.
Questions people ask
Does the old system need to stay open?
We would keep it for the period you are parallel running, which is what we would say about any change of system. Murgese has not yet been run alongside another package for a full annual cycle, so treat the first year as a year in which you check rather than assume.
What about attachments and files?
Documents come across as documents. Where the source holds a file against a transaction, the migration reports what it could and could not bring, rather than leaving you to discover the gap.
How long does it take?
It depends on the size of the history. A few years of a small trading company is quick. A large portfolio with tens of thousands of postings takes longer, and the reconciliation at the end is the part worth waiting for.
Can I migrate one client to see how it goes?
That is what we would suggest. Take one company you know well, migrate it, run the reconciliation, then run the filed period check against a year you have already signed.
Try it with one company
Pick a client whose numbers you know by heart. Migrate it, read the reconciliation, and judge the product on what it tells you.