Accounting software migration for firms: a five-gate plan from pilot to cutover

01What should an accounting firm move, and what should it archive?

Start with an inventory, not an export. List the client companies in scope, the financial periods and every kind of record the team uses: opening balances, transaction history, sales and purchase documents, bank data, open invoices, fixed asset registers, VAT and payroll records, previous working papers and client due diligence files. For each one, decide whether it moves into the new platform, stays in an archive the team can still search, or both.

A trial balance is not the whole firm. It can be enough to start a client's books on the new platform, but a reviewer answering a question next year may need the invoice behind a posting, the reconciliation that explained a difference or the correspondence that closed a query. Decide where each of those will live before anything is imported.

Then name the source of truth for each period. During testing the old system usually stays the book of record. Agree who may post adjustments, how changes made after the first export are captured, and the date from which the new platform takes over. Without that decision, two systems that each look internally consistent can drift apart because different people kept updating them.

02How long must old records stay retrievable after a migration?

The archive is not optional, and the duties behind it belong to different people. Some are your clients' duties, which you help them meet because you keep their books. Others are the firm's own. A migration plan should map each record type to the longest period that applies and keep it retrievable, in a form someone can open and read, until that period ends.

For a company in Malta, the Companies Act requires accounting records to be kept for ten years; where they are kept in a bound or unified form, the ten years run from the last entry (Cap. 386, article 163(5)). The same article requires the records to be open to inspection by the company's officers at all times. VAT records must be kept for at least six years from the end of the year they relate to; where a return is filed late or corrected, the six years run from the late filing or the correction request (Cap. 406, article 48(4)). The VAT Act also requires invoices to be stored in the original form in which they were sent or made available, paper or electronic (Eleventh Schedule, paragraph 1(2)). A converted copy is not the original.

The firm's own records have their own rules. Malta's anti-money laundering regulations cover auditors, external accountants and tax advisers. They require customer due diligence records, and the supporting records needed to reconstruct transactions, to be kept for five years from the end of the business relationship. The period can be extended, up to a maximum of ten years, only where a thorough assessment of necessity and proportionality concludes that the extension is necessary for the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, supervisory authorities or law enforcement to prevent, detect, analyse or investigate money laundering or terrorist financing (S.L. 373.01, regulation 13(2)). From 10 July 2027, the EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 applies directly to auditors, external accountants and tax advisers, and its Article 77 then governs how long these records are kept (Articles 3, 77 and 90).

Audit firms carry one more duty. ISQM 1, the IAASB's quality management standard, says the retention period for engagements under the ISAs is ordinarily no shorter than five years from the date of the engagement report (paragraph A85); ISA 230 says the same of the auditor's report (paragraph A23). ISA 230 forbids deleting or discarding audit documentation of any nature after the final file is assembled and before its retention period ends (paragraph 15). ISQM 1 adds that keeping documentation can mean managing the custody, integrity, accessibility or retrievability of the data and the related technology (paragraph A84). That is the migration risk in one sentence: a closed audit file that only opens in software you no longer licence is not retrievable. In Malta, compliance with generally accepted auditing standards means adherence to the IAASB's International Standards on Auditing, its quality control standards and other related standards, as issued from time to time and as far as they are relevant to the statutory audit (S.L. 281.02, regulations 2 and 4). Check whether a longer retention period applies to your firm.

03How do you map accounts, tax codes and documents before importing?

Map before you import. Write down how each source item lands in the new platform: the chart of accounts, VAT and other tax codes, customer and supplier records, dimensions such as departments or projects, currencies and fixed asset categories. Ask the supplier which fields import directly, which need configuration and which need manual work. Test unusual and inactive codes as well as the common ones.

Decide how you will handle duplicates, unsupported fields and missing documents, and record each decision. Keep the mapping in a form a preparer and a reviewer can both read, with an owner and a date. If you serve clients under different reporting frameworks or tax rules, validate each group's workflow rather than assuming one clean import covers everyone.

Build a retained-record index alongside the mapping. For each client and period, list what moved, what was archived, where it now sits and in what format. At the end of the pilot you reconcile this index as well as the balances. A document that was meant to move but did not is a migration error, even when every total agrees.

• Source code or field, target code or field, and the rule that links them.
• Tax codes checked against the rates and treatments each client actually uses.
• How inactive accounts, duplicates and unsupported fields are treated.
• Which attachments move, and whether their links to postings survive.
• Who prepared the mapping, who approved it and when.

04How do you test and reconcile a pilot cohort?

Choose a small cohort that contains the record types you actually handle. A simple trading company is a sensible first case. Add a client with several bank accounts, foreign currency, payroll or a more complex ledger when those features matter to your practice. Keep the pilot small enough that one named person can own every exception.

Reconcile at more than one level. Agree the imported trial balance to the source account by account at the cut-over date. Then check the balances behind it: bank, aged receivables, aged payables, the VAT control account and any other control accounts in scope. Log every difference with its cause, the correction and who approved it. Matching headline totals can hide a supplier posted to the wrong account or a tax code mapped to the wrong rate.

Then test retrieval, because that is where migrations fail quietly. ICAEW's audit monitoring insights, published on 29 June 2026, report that some of the smallest audit firms failed to manage the move from paper audit files to new audit software, and original documentation was lost or missing. That is UK monitoring by ICAEW's Quality Assurance Department, not a Malta finding, but the risk it describes comes with any software change. Its head of audit put it plainly: 'Disciplined change management is critical'. In your pilot, ask a reviewer who did not run the import to start from a balance in the new platform and find the original document, its version and the explanation that went with it. Matching totals is not the same as matching records. A migration is finished when a reviewer can find the original.

05How do you move staff, clients and permissions?

Rebuild access rather than copying it. Set up sample roles and confirm that each person sees the right companies and can do only their own steps: preparers prepare, reviewers review, partners sign. Check who can export data, who can delete it and who can reopen a closed period. Then run an ordinary request, upload, preparation, review and correction from start to finish on a pilot client.

Tell clients what changes, when, and what stays the same. A short message should say where to upload records from which date, what happens to anything sent the old way, and whom to contact. Tell staff which work continues in the old system, which moves, and the date old access becomes read-only. Train on the team's real workflow rather than a tour of menus.

Settle the exit from the old supplier at the same time. Where it processes client personal data for you, the GDPR requires a contract or other binding legal act, and it must let you choose whether the supplier deletes or returns the data when the service ends (Article 28(3)(g)). Ask for the return first, in formats you can open without its software, check it against your record index and only then confirm deletion.

06When is a firm ready to cut over, and what is the fallback?

Approve cutover when the pilot's exceptions are resolved to the responsible person's satisfaction, not because a licence renewal is due. Agree the final export, any remaining import and the final reconciliation. Record who approved cutover and who may pause the rollout if a material issue appears.

Pick a cut-over point that keeps periods clean. A month end, quarter end or VAT period end avoids splitting a period across two systems. Busy filing weeks are a poor time to switch, because the people who must review the exceptions have the least time.

Define the fallback before you need it: which records are preserved, which system would resume posting and how changes made in between would be reconciled. Then give the old system's editable life an end date. Two editable ledgers kept open indefinitely create a reconciliation problem of their own. After that date, keep the old data read-only and retrievable for its retention period, or exported to formats you can open without the old software.

07What should you ask Vacei, or any supplier, about migration?

Vacei's published pages say that ledgers are migrated from a firm's current software or Excel, prior year included, that its team helps set up the firm and train its people, and that the firm's data stays exportable in full, at any time, in open formats. Its pricing page lists onboarding and training for the firm's team, with firm pricing on request.

Turn those statements into questions for your proposal. Which source systems and file formats are covered? Does 'prior year' mean balances, transactions or documents as well? Are attachments, working papers and client due diligence files included, or only ledgers? Who reconciles the import: your team, the supplier or both? Which open formats does the export use, and does it include documents? Ask for the answers in writing, with scope, responsibilities, timing and fees agreed for your practice.

Prepare your record inventory before you talk to any supplier; the gate plan below gives you the list. It records which decisions are ready; it does not set a migration deadline or promise that every record can move automatically. Vacei's firm demo is a 30-minute walkthrough: you tell Vacei what you plan to move, and the demo uses sample data to show the relevant workflow.