“Our accountant wants Xero but our system won't talk to it”
Your accountant, or a new finance hire, suggests moving to Xero. The reasons are good: bank feeds, easy collaboration, a big app ecosystem, and it's what many advisers already use. Then someone asks, "What about the order and stock system?" Suddenly a sensible finance decision looks like a much bigger project.
Why it happens
Many established business systems for wholesalers and distributors include their own built-in ledgers: sales, purchase and nominal, all in one package. When they were bought, that was a strength. One system, one database, everything joined up.
The flip side is that those systems weren't designed to hand finance over to a separate accounting platform. So when the accounts move to Xero, the business can end up with two systems that don't share data: orders and stock in one, money in the other, joined together by exports, imports and manual journals.
What it costs
- Double entry. Invoices, credit notes and supplier bills re-keyed or imported in batches.
- Reconciliation pain. Month-end turns into matching two sets of numbers.
- Delayed insight. Cash and margin figures lag days or weeks behind trading.
- Errors. Every manual handover is a chance for a wrong VAT code, account or amount.
- A stalled decision. Often the business doesn't move to Xero at all, and finance keeps working around a set-up that no longer suits it.
What changing looks like
The clean answer is to let each system do what it's best at: operations in your order, stock and warehouse platform, and accounting in Xero, with the two kept in sync automatically.
- Decide where each record lives. Customers, suppliers, products and prices start in operations. Ledgers, bank and VAT live in Xero.
- Sync, don't export. Sales invoices, credit notes, purchase bills and payments flow to Xero as they happen.
- Map once. Account codes, tax rates and tracking categories are set up once and applied consistently.
- Move balances carefully. Opening balances and open items are brought across at a clean cut-off date, agreed with your accountant.
- Run in parallel. Check a period side by side before switching off the old ledgers.
Dark Store Systems syncs with Xero, so your accountant gets the platform they want and operations get a system built for orders, stock and fulfilment.
Bring your accountant in early
The smoothest moves we see involve the accountant from day one. They know your VAT position, your year-end and how they like to see information, and they can decide the cut-off date with you rather than inherit it. Ask them which reports they rely on today and make sure those can be produced from Xero once the sync is running. A short planning session up front saves a lot of untangling at the first month-end.
Questions to ask
- How many hours a month does finance spend moving data between systems?
- How quickly after month-end do you know your margin?
- Is your accountant already on Xero with other clients?
To see how operations and accounts can move together, read our guide to switching from a legacy ERP.
FAQs
Do we have to move everything at once? No. Many businesses move operations first and connect Xero at a planned cut-off, or the other way round, agreed with their accountant.
What happens to our historical accounts? Typically, opening balances and open items move to Xero and history is kept in the old system or an archive for reference. Your accountant will advise.
Will VAT be affected? Tax codes are mapped during set-up. Your accountant should review the mapping before go-live.
Is Xero right for every business? Not always. It suits many SMEs, but your accountant is best placed to advise for your structure.
Software that moves as fast as your business. Talk to us about where your business is going.