- Original Poster
- #1
I'm looking to make the switch from Freeagent to Clearbooks as the way Freaagent deals with CIS is poor and is adding to my admin. time each month. I have heard good things about Clearbooks and my trial period seems to be going well - perhaps not as 'modern' as Freeagent but seem sto do everything I need.
I found a comment albeit 5 years ago by Paul Scholes over on the Clearbooks forum and know he also posts on here:
"Sometimes it's more hassle than it's worth trying to transfer over a year's transactions but it can be done.
Whether you want to transfer or not then, in addition to the backup file, which holds tabs for bank transactions, invoices, bills, contacts etc, go to FA Reports and pick Trial Balance (up to the latest date) and, using the Export button, download a summary CSV, of the Trial Balance itself as well as the Transactions CSV, the latter is the most important one as it lists every transaction put through the books in the year and can be used to reconstruct things.
I would also run the P&L and Balance Sheet reports and Aged Debtors & Creditors, all download as CSV files. Finally, if VAT registered and not already done, do screen prints of all the VAT returns, especially the "Full Report" tab.
As Kevin says there are various things you can import into CB and you'll see these listed on the Tools>Import tab, and you can download templates to see the sort of column headings CB needs.
You can save the relevant tabs in the FA backup file as individual CSVs for Invoices, Bills and contacts, only with the latter you need to split this into two, one for customers and the other suppliers. These can then be played with to match the templates for import.
If you used Expenses in FA there's a tab for this as well only CB doesn't enable Expenses import so import them as extra bills with the employee/director name as the supplier.
The backup file has two bank transaction lists one "Entries" the other "Transactions" I find the latter the best one as it contains the names of the payees.
This can be manipulated to import via the Tools>Import (or bank import) tabs (you end up in the same place).
Now perhaps you can see why people avoid importing loads of transactions. I have to say, if it was my client, I'd just import the Contacts and the Trial Balance CSV (as a journal) on the last day of the financial year.
By the way, have you asked FA about having an archived account, I'm not sure if they do them but it would enable you to login and loog at the data for a few years until you didn't need the info any more and could rely on the XLS files.
If you import them as straight bank imports you then have to go through every entry and explain it (as you did in FA) but if many of the bank entries are paying off invoices or bills you can import just these transactions via the Sales Payments or Bill payments import which, as long as the bank entries have the invoice & bill numbers, will match the payments against the invoices/bills for you, leaving you to only import & explain the other bank entries."
Does anyone have experience of switching and importing everything over? I only have 6 months of trading but quite a high number of transactions just wondering the best way to go about it?
I found a comment albeit 5 years ago by Paul Scholes over on the Clearbooks forum and know he also posts on here:
"Sometimes it's more hassle than it's worth trying to transfer over a year's transactions but it can be done.
Whether you want to transfer or not then, in addition to the backup file, which holds tabs for bank transactions, invoices, bills, contacts etc, go to FA Reports and pick Trial Balance (up to the latest date) and, using the Export button, download a summary CSV, of the Trial Balance itself as well as the Transactions CSV, the latter is the most important one as it lists every transaction put through the books in the year and can be used to reconstruct things.
I would also run the P&L and Balance Sheet reports and Aged Debtors & Creditors, all download as CSV files. Finally, if VAT registered and not already done, do screen prints of all the VAT returns, especially the "Full Report" tab.
As Kevin says there are various things you can import into CB and you'll see these listed on the Tools>Import tab, and you can download templates to see the sort of column headings CB needs.
You can save the relevant tabs in the FA backup file as individual CSVs for Invoices, Bills and contacts, only with the latter you need to split this into two, one for customers and the other suppliers. These can then be played with to match the templates for import.
If you used Expenses in FA there's a tab for this as well only CB doesn't enable Expenses import so import them as extra bills with the employee/director name as the supplier.
The backup file has two bank transaction lists one "Entries" the other "Transactions" I find the latter the best one as it contains the names of the payees.
This can be manipulated to import via the Tools>Import (or bank import) tabs (you end up in the same place).
Now perhaps you can see why people avoid importing loads of transactions. I have to say, if it was my client, I'd just import the Contacts and the Trial Balance CSV (as a journal) on the last day of the financial year.
By the way, have you asked FA about having an archived account, I'm not sure if they do them but it would enable you to login and loog at the data for a few years until you didn't need the info any more and could rely on the XLS files.
If you import them as straight bank imports you then have to go through every entry and explain it (as you did in FA) but if many of the bank entries are paying off invoices or bills you can import just these transactions via the Sales Payments or Bill payments import which, as long as the bank entries have the invoice & bill numbers, will match the payments against the invoices/bills for you, leaving you to only import & explain the other bank entries."
Does anyone have experience of switching and importing everything over? I only have 6 months of trading but quite a high number of transactions just wondering the best way to go about it?
