Move your books across
without stopping the business

Sage Business Cloud Accounting

Sage's South African product exports most of this as reports you can save as CSV. If payroll runs in a separate Sage product, its own year-to-date and deduction reports are what the payroll steps read, not the accounting product.

• Chart of accounts — Your chart of accounts (the account list), exported to CSV. Sage's South African help does not document where this export lives, and it differs between versions: look on the account list, or under Reports, for an option that sends it to CSV. The file needs each account's code, name and financial category. Leave the categories as Sage writes them: Ledgr reads all ten (Sales, Cost of Sales, Other Income, Expenses, Income Tax, Current Assets, Non-Current Assets, Current Liabilities, Non-Current Liabilities, Owners' Equity).
• Opening trial balance — Reports → Financial Statements → Trial Balance, then send it to CSV (top right). As at the day before your Ledgr start date. A two-column Debit/Credit trial balance is ideal; a single signed balance column also works. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are.
• Customers and suppliers — Customers → Reports → List of Customers, sent to CSV; then the matching list report under Suppliers → Reports. One file per list. Keep every column — Ledgr takes the VAT number, the addresses, the phone and the company registration number from whichever of those the report carries. The VAT number matters most: a tax invoice over R5 000 has to carry your customer's VAT number to be a valid one.
• Products and services — Items → Lists → List of Items. Export the list to CSV if your version offers it there; if it does not, look under Reports for an item listing you can send to CSV. Include cost and selling price, and stock on hand if you carry stock.
• Open invoices — Reports → Customers → Customer Balances - Days Outstanding, run in detail rather than as a summary, then sent to CSV. Check the file lists one row per invoice with the amount still due on it. If it shows one line per customer, it is still a summary, and a customer total has nothing Ledgr can turn into documents. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are.
• Open supplier bills — Reports → Suppliers → Supplier Balances - Days Outstanding, run in detail rather than as a summary, then sent to CSV. Check the file lists one row per supplier invoice with the amount still due on it; a line per supplier is a summary. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Payroll year-to-date figures — Your payroll product's year-to-date or EMP501-style totals report per employee. Per employee since 1 March: employee number (or ID or tax number), periods worked, gross cash remuneration, PAYE, annual payments and the PAYE on them, UIF (employee and employer), SDL, pension (employee and employer), medical aid (employee and employer), the medical tax credit already applied, and other fringe benefits. Download the template for the exact columns.
• Recurring payroll deductions — Your payroll product's third-party/beneficiary deduction schedule, not the accounting product. One row per employee per deduction. For each: who it goes to, what kind it is, the calculation (a fixed rand amount or a percentage), and — for a garnishee order or a loan — the total still owing, so it stops on its own once that debt is settled.
• SARS filing history — From SARS eFiling rather than your old accounting package. EMP201 per month and VAT201 per period for the current year, last year's IRP5/IT3(a) totals, the last assessed taxable income for the IRP6 basic amount, and any assessed loss carried forward.
• Sales leads — Not applicable — your accounting package has no pipeline to export. If you keep leads in a separate CRM, export its lead list to CSV; otherwise the spreadsheet is your source.
• Recipes (bills of materials) — Not applicable — your accounting package has no recipes to export. If you run a separate manufacturing tool, export its bill of materials list to CSV; otherwise the spreadsheet is your source.

Sage 50cloud Pastel Partner / Xpress

Desktop Pastel keeps its data locally, so start by taking a full backup, dated and kept somewhere safe. (Sage 200 Evolution is a different product with its own import and export utility; these steps do not apply to it.)

• Chart of accounts — Pastel Explorer → General Ledger → right-click the grid → Export to Excel, then save it as CSV. Use the Explorer export rather than File → Export/Import, because of what each file says about an account's category. The Explorer grid carries the words — Sales, Other Income, Cost of Sales, Expenses — and Ledgr reads those. The File → Export/Import general-ledger file says only I (income statement) or B (balance sheet), which tells Ledgr which statement an account belongs on and nothing about which side of it, so those rows are refused rather than guessed at. Keep Code, Name and Category, and if you do use File → Export/Import for anything else, tick Include Field Names before you process or the file arrives with no header row and nothing can be matched to anything.
• Opening trial balance — Pastel Explorer → General Ledger → right-click the grid → Export to Excel, then save it as CSV. The same one export as the chart of accounts, keeping the Code and balance columns as well. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are. Take it on the day before your Ledgr start date: the Explorer grid shows balances as they are now, so a copy taken later is a different trial balance.
• Customers and suppliers — File → Export/Import → Export Customer Accounts, then again with Export Supplier Accounts. One file per list, and tick Include Field Names before you process — without it there is no header row and nothing can be matched. Pastel keeps the company name in the Description column and the buyer's name in Contact Person; Ledgr reads the company name. Bring your whole customer list across in one file — Ledgr takes up to 5 000 rows at a time.
• Products and services — File → Export/Import → Export Inventory Items (tick Include Field Names). If the file has no cost or quantity on it, add those two columns from Pastel Explorer → Inventory. Pastel keeps the item name in the Description column; Ledgr reads it from there. If you use more than one store, Pastel writes the same item once per store: combine each item into a single row carrying its total quantity before you import, because Ledgr keeps the first row for each item code and skips the rest.
• Open invoices — View → Customers → Monthly/Periodic → Invoices Due, then Print To ASCII with Show Details switched off; open that file in Excel as comma-delimited text and save it as CSV. That gives one row per open invoice — Invoice Number, Invoice Date, Customer and Still to Pay — and Ledgr reads Still to Pay as the amount outstanding. Age Analysis is the wrong report here: it totals per customer rather than per invoice. File → Export/Import cannot produce this at all; it exports account details, not transactions. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Open supplier bills — View → Suppliers → Monthly/Periodic → Invoices Due, then Print To ASCII with Show Details switched off; open that file in Excel as comma-delimited text and save it as CSV. One row per open supplier invoice — Invoice Number, Invoice Date, Supplier and Still to Pay — and Ledgr reads Still to Pay as what is owed. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Payroll year-to-date figures — Sage Pastel Payroll & HR (or Sage Business Cloud Payroll) — an employee year-to-date totals report, not the accounting product. Per employee since 1 March: employee number (or ID or tax number), periods worked, gross cash remuneration, PAYE, annual payments and the PAYE on them, UIF (employee and employer), SDL, pension (employee and employer), medical aid (employee and employer), the medical tax credit already applied, and other fringe benefits. Download the template for the exact columns. Sage payroll keeps recurring deductions — garnishee orders (Emoluments Attachment Orders), union fees, medical aid, provident or pension fund, staff loans — as its own "Third Party" setup rather than a line in this report, so they do not travel with this file. Bring them across next, with the recurring deductions import below, once the employee and this file are both in.
• Recurring payroll deductions — Sage Pastel Payroll & HR's "Third Party" setup — garnishees/EAOs, union fees, medical aid, provident or pension fund, staff loans. Pastel keeps each of these as its own third-party recipient rather than a row in an export, so there is no single file to pull — list them out per employee: the recipient's name, what kind it is (an Emoluments Attachment Order is Ledgr's "Garnishee order"), the amount or percentage, and for an EAO or a loan the total still owed, which is what makes it stop automatically once paid off.
• SARS filing history — From SARS eFiling rather than your old accounting package. EMP201 per month and VAT201 per period for the current year, last year's IRP5/IT3(a) totals, the last assessed taxable income for the IRP6 basic amount, and any assessed loss carried forward.
• Sales leads — Not applicable — Pastel has no pipeline to export. If you keep leads in a separate CRM, export its lead list to CSV; otherwise the spreadsheet is your source.
• Recipes (bills of materials) — Not applicable — Pastel has no recipes to export. If you keep recipes in a separate manufacturing package, export its bill of materials list; otherwise the spreadsheet is your source.

Xero

Xero exports each list separately — there is no single bundle — and its reports export to Excel, Google Sheets or PDF, so save a report as CSV before you upload it. Bank statement lines can come from the bank itself instead.

• Chart of accounts — Accounting → Chart of accounts → Export. Xero's own chart-of-accounts CSV. Change nothing in it. The asterisks on the required columns ("*Code", "*Name", "*Type") are fine, and so are Xero's own account types — Bank, Current Asset, Fixed Asset, Current Liability, Non-current Liability, Direct Costs, Revenue, Expense, Equity and the rest. Ledgr reads them, and it does not read your Xero account numbers as though they were South African ones.
• Opening trial balance — Reporting → All reports → Trial Balance → Export → Excel. Set the date to the day before your Ledgr start date. Xero's reports export to Excel, Google Sheets or PDF — there is no CSV option — so open the Excel file and save it as CSV. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are.
• Customers and suppliers — Contacts → All contacts → the three-dot menu → Export. Keep every column. Two things about this file are worth knowing. It does NOT say who is a customer and who is a supplier — Xero only decides that once you have raised a transaction — so use the Customers and Suppliers tabs and bring them across as two files, and Ledgr will ask you which one you are importing. And its "PO" columns are the postal address while its "SA" columns are the street address (Street Address, nothing to do with South Africa); Ledgr keeps them apart.
• Products and services — Sales → Products and services → Export → CSV. The item list as CSV, unchanged. Xero states a purchase price and a sales price on the same row: Ledgr takes your SELLING price from Sales Unit Price and your cost from Purchases Unit Price, and reads the sales tax rate rather than the purchases one. It names each product by its Name and keeps the Sales Description, so the wording that prints on a customer's invoice line comes across too.
• Open invoices — Sales → Invoices → Awaiting Payment tab → Export. The awaiting-payment list, which excludes paid invoices for you. If you export everything instead, that is fine: Xero writes a Status column and Ledgr reads it, so paid, voided, deleted and draft documents are left out and it tells you how many. Xero exports at most 500 transactions at a time — if you have more open than that, narrow the list by date and export it in batches. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Open supplier bills — Purchases → Bills → Awaiting Payment tab → Export. The awaiting-payment list, which leaves paid bills out for you. A full export is fine too: Ledgr reads its Status column and leaves paid, voided and draft bills out. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Payroll year-to-date figures — Your payroll product's year-to-date totals per employee. Per employee since 1 March: employee number (or ID or tax number), periods worked, gross cash remuneration, PAYE, annual payments and the PAYE on them, UIF (employee and employer), SDL, pension (employee and employer), medical aid (employee and employer), the medical tax credit already applied, and other fringe benefits. Download the template for the exact columns.
• Recurring payroll deductions — Your payroll product's recurring deduction or third-party payment schedule. One row per employee per deduction, with the beneficiary, the kind, the calculation and — for anything with a fixed total to pay off — the balance still owing.
• SARS filing history — From SARS eFiling rather than your old accounting package. EMP201 per month and VAT201 per period for the current year, last year's IRP5/IT3(a) totals, the last assessed taxable income for the IRP6 basic amount, and any assessed loss carried forward.
• Sales leads — Not applicable — your accounting package has no pipeline to export. The pipeline is normally kept in a spreadsheet or a separate CRM. Export whichever holds it, one row per person.
• Recipes (bills of materials) — Not applicable — your accounting package has no recipes to export. Recipes normally live in a spreadsheet or a dedicated MRP tool. Export whichever holds them, one row per component.

QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks exports its lists to Excel, and its reports to Excel or CSV. Save anything that comes out as Excel to CSV before uploading — Ledgr's import reads CSV, not .xlsx.

• Chart of accounts — Reports → Standard reports → Account List → Export/Print → Export to Excel. Save the exported file as CSV. Do this before you export anything else: switch account numbers on under Settings → Account and settings → Advanced → Chart of accounts, and turn on BOTH Enable account numbers and Show account numbers, then give every account a number. Account numbers are optional in QuickBooks, and without Show account numbers your trial balance prints account names only — which is what Ledgr matches opening balances on, so it would be refused.
• Opening trial balance — Reports → Standard reports → Trial Balance → Export/Print → Export as CSV. Set the report date to the day before your start date first. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are. Do check that your accounts have numbers on them first — Ledgr matches opening balances on the account code, so a trial balance that only names its accounts has nothing to land in.
• Customers and suppliers — All apps → Customer Hub → Customers & leads → Export → Export to Excel; then All apps → Expenses & Bills → Vendors → Export. Two files. QuickBooks list exports come out as Excel, so save each one as CSV before you upload it. Neither file says which list it is, so Ledgr will ask — customers first, then suppliers.
• Products and services — All apps → Sales & Get Paid → Products & services → More → Run reports → Export/Print → Export to Excel. QuickBooks has no plain item export, so this one comes out as a report; save it as CSV and import it as it is. Customise the report's columns first if SKU, Cost and Quantity on hand are not showing. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are.
• Open invoices — Reports → Standard reports → Open Invoices → Export/Print → Export as CSV. The open-invoices report, which excludes paid ones by definition. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Open supplier bills — Reports → Standard reports → Unpaid Bills → Export/Print → Export as CSV. The unpaid-bills report, which excludes paid ones by definition. Import it exactly as it comes out — Ledgr reads the report's own layout, so leave the title rows, the group headings and the totals where they are. Anything already settled is left out and counted for you, so it cannot be double-counted against the opening trial balance you have already brought in.
• Payroll year-to-date figures — Your payroll product's year-to-date totals per employee. Per employee since 1 March: employee number (or ID or tax number), periods worked, gross cash remuneration, PAYE, annual payments and the PAYE on them, UIF (employee and employer), SDL, pension (employee and employer), medical aid (employee and employer), the medical tax credit already applied, and other fringe benefits. Download the template for the exact columns.
• Recurring payroll deductions — Your payroll product's recurring deduction or third-party payment schedule. One row per employee per deduction, with the beneficiary, the kind, the calculation and — for anything with a fixed total to pay off — the balance still owing.
• SARS filing history — From SARS eFiling rather than your old accounting package. EMP201 per month and VAT201 per period for the current year, last year's IRP5/IT3(a) totals, the last assessed taxable income for the IRP6 basic amount, and any assessed loss carried forward.
• Sales leads — All apps → Customer Hub → Customers & leads → the Leads tab (Plus and Advanced only). Export the lead list from there if it offers an export; otherwise, or on a plan with no Customer Hub, the spreadsheet you keep your enquiries in is your source. One row per person.
• Recipes (bills of materials) — Not applicable — your accounting package has no recipes to export. Export from whichever tool holds the bills of materials, one row per component.

Excel, Google Sheets or paper

The easiest switch of all, because there is no export to deal with. Put your customer list into a sheet with a Name column, an Email column and a Phone column, save it as CSV, and upload it.

• One row per customer, one header row, nothing merged
• Your last bank statement as CSV or OFX from the bank's portal
• A list of who still owes you what, and what you still owe
• Your bank balance on the cutover date

Something else entirely

If it can produce a CSV, the importer will probably take it. A chart of accounts, an opening trial balance, a customer list, a list of open invoices and a price list are all you need to start. Payroll and bank statements have their own imports, listed in the table above, and everything from the cutover date onwards is recorded in Ledgr.

For a large or unusual move, the REST API takes contacts, invoices and products directly, which turns a one-off migration into a short script. API keys come with Business and above.

Out of the old system

• Chart of accounts
• Trial balance at the day before cutover
• Customer and supplier lists as CSV
• Open invoices, one row per invoice
• Aged debtors and aged creditors, for your records
• Inventory valuation, if you carry stock
• Employee year-to-date figures, if you run payroll
• PDFs of filed VAT and payroll returns
• PDFs of the last two years of annual financial statements
• A final backup, if it is desktop software

Into Ledgr

• Company details, VAT number and financial year end captured
• Invoice numbering continues the old sequence
• Logo, default terms, banking details and footer set
• Chart of accounts and opening trial balance imported
• Contacts imported and spot-checked
• Products imported, prices and VAT rates checked
• Bank accounts added, opening balances set, one statement imported
• Open invoices imported, open bills captured
• Stock brought in with the products, and 3500 Opening Balance Equity back to zero
• Users invited with the right roles, 2FA switched on
• Balance sheet agrees with the old system at the cutover date