The QBO Review

The more we examined the accounting environment, the more obvious it became that moving from QuickBooks Online to Xero could not simply be a software migration.

An independent review was undertaken in July.

The findings were significant.

Payroll items were not fully mapped to the chart of accounts.

Payroll clearing and liability accounts had not been reconciled.

PAYG withholding and superannuation liability accounts had not been reconciled.

Wage expense accounts did not reconcile to STP reporting.

Some wage and superannuation payments had been coded in ways the reviewer considered inappropriate.

Customer credits from earlier years had not been applied to invoices.

Supplier payments remained unapplied.

The Commonwealth Bank account was recorded as $1,000 out of balance after the 30 June reconciliation, with unreconciled transactions remaining.

Several other accounts had never been reconciled.

Inventory and payment-platform processes were heavily manual.

Shopify, Square and Stripe raised integration and reconciliation questions.

The recommendation was not to blindly import the historical transactions into Xero.

Instead, consideration should be given to establishing a clean Xero file using verified opening balances.

That document mattered enormously to me because it separated perception from evidence.

I did not need to call anybody dishonest.

I did not need to allege fraud.

The specialist review documented legacy accounting and control deficiencies that required attention.

Intent was not the issue.

Responsibility was.

Once the CEO knows the accounts require remediation, the CEO has to act.

You cannot discover unreconciled liabilities and then decide they are inconvenient to discuss.

You fix them.