Switching accounting software: how to do it without losing your records

Switching feels like a job that will cost you a weekend, and it does not have to. The sting is not in moving the data but in three details: the moment you pick, your invoice numbering, and the seven-year retention rule on what you leave behind.

The best moment: 1 January, otherwise a quarter boundary

Switch on 1 January and you have one set of records per financial year. Everything from last year sits in the old program, everything from this year in the new one, and your annual figures are not scraped together from two sources.

If that is not an option, pick the first day of a quarter. The cut then lines up with your VAT return and you never have to assemble a return from two systems. Switching mid-quarter is the most expensive variant: you then add that return up by hand from two programs.

What to take, and what to leave

Take with you:

• Clients and projects. Almost every program exports these to CSV or Excel.
• Outstanding invoices. Anything not yet paid has to come along. Otherwise your new program will not show who still owes you.
• Your last invoice number. One number, and the most important part of the whole move. See below.
• Outstanding supplier invoices and the book value of your assets, if you depreciate them.
• Your business details and logo. Five minutes of work, but a shame if your first invoice goes out bare.

You can leave behind: paid invoices from previous years, old receipts and completed VAT returns. You do not need to import those into your new program, but you do need to be able to produce them. More on that below.

Step by step

1. Export everything from your old program before you do anything else. Clients, invoices, expenses, bank transactions, and the PDFs of your invoices. Keep it as one folder on your own drive, not only in the cloud of the provider you are about to leave.
2. Set up your business details in the new program: name, Chamber of Commerce number, VAT number, IBAN, logo and your payment term.
3. Set your invoice number correctly (see below).
4. Import your clients, then your outstanding invoices.
5. Run one test. Create an invoice, open the PDF, and put it next to one from your old program. Does it carry all the required details?
6. Run both for a week if you want certainty, or switch in one go on a quarter boundary.
7. Only then cancel your old subscription.

Your invoice numbers have to run on

The Dutch Tax Administration wants sequential, unique numbering without gaps. If your old program left you at F2026-041, your first invoice in the new one is F2026-042. Not back to 1, and no jump to 100 because that is a round number.

So before you switch, look up your highest issued invoice number and set it as the starting number in your new program. In Finq that field sits under Settings, so your series simply continues. Starting a new series is allowed too, as long as that series runs consecutively, but one continuous numbering is the easiest thing to explain in an audit.

Cancel only once your export is safe

Your retention obligation is seven years and it does not transfer to your new provider. Once you cancel your old subscription, access to that data often ends within weeks or months, and then it is your problem, not the provider's.

So: export first, check that the export is genuinely readable, and cancel only after that. Alongside the CSV files, keep the PDFs of your invoices; a CSV of amounts is not an invoice.

Four mistakes worth skipping

• Cancelling before exporting. The classic. Reverse the order.
• Invoice numbers restarting at 1. Two invoices numbered 1 in one year is exactly the kind of gap an audit lands on.
• Leaving outstanding invoices behind. Your new dashboard then reads zero while money is still owed to you.
• Switching mid-quarter and then having to add up the VAT return from two systems.

In Finq

You import clients from a CSV file, set your invoice number under Settings to where you left off, and your business details and logo are ready in a few minutes. Invoicing, quotes, time tracking and mileage are free and unlimited, so you can try the move at your own pace before bringing your bookkeeping across.

Still comparing? See the alternatives to Moneybird or how Finq works as accounting software.