Moving your books to Ledgr

What comes across

Five things. Together they mean the first invoice you raise in Ledgr goes to a customer who already exists, and the first statement you send says exactly what is owed.

• Customers and suppliers

  Names, references, VAT numbers, email, phone and postal address.

• Products and services

  Code, name, description and selling price. Prices come in exactly as exported — check whether they include VAT.

• Open customer invoices

  Everything still unpaid on the day you move, as one balance brought forward per customer. Part-paid invoices come in at what is still owed.

• Open supplier bills

  Everything you still owe on the day you move, one bill each, so you can pay them from here.

• Trial balance

  Your closing balances, posted as opening balances on the day before you start.

What stays behind

We would rather tell you now than have you find out on a Monday.

• •Transaction history. The old system's postings, VAT treatment and category choices stay where they are, as the record of what happened before. You look history up there.
• •Paid invoices and paid bills. They were recognised and taxed in the old system. Bringing them in again would count the sales and the VAT twice.
• •Bank transactions. Your bank's own statement is the better witness. Import it from the bank's file and every line is matched from there.
• •Stock on hand. Items come across; the quantity on the shelf does not. Take a count on the day and enter it once.

How long it takes

A Saturday afternoon for a typical small business. The exports take minutes each. Most of the time goes on one step: your accountant mapping the trial balance lines to accounts in Ledgr. Once that is done, the invoices and bills drop in and the checks take a few minutes more.

Nothing posts until you say so. Every file is read and shown to you first — what it would create, what it would skip and why — and only then written. Bring the same file in twice and Ledgr recognises what is already there and leaves it alone.

What to do first

1. 1Pick the day you move. The first day of a month is easiest; the first day of a VAT period is easier still. Everything you export is dated the day before.
2. 2Finish the old system to that day. Bank reconciled, invoices raised, bills entered. What is still open on that day is exactly what comes across.
3. 3Set up your business in Ledgr — name, VAT number, financial year — so there is somewhere for the books to land.
4. 4Open the guide for your system below and work down it in order. People first, then what you sell, then the trial balance, then what is still owed.
5. 5Do the checks at the end of the guide. Debtors and creditors should agree with the old system to the cent.

Where the balances sit

The balances you bring in wait under an account called Opening balances — awaiting allocation until your accountant allocates them. That is deliberate. It means the books open with the right totals on day one, and nobody has to guess what funded what before the person who knows has looked. Once the trial balance is mapped, that account should sit close to nil.

These pages explain how a move works. Ledgr never files anything with SARS for you, and what you already filed from the old system stays filed. See also our guides on tax and bookkeeping.