Moving off Sage,
carefully.

How do you move from Sage to Bizzle?

1. 1

   Decide about payroll first

   If you run payroll in Sage, time the move for 6 April. Mid-year payroll migration is possible and it is the part most likely to go wrong, so avoid it if the calendar allows.

2. 2

   Choose the ledger switch date

   A VAT quarter boundary or your financial year end, so no return is split across two systems.

3. 3

   Export from Sage

   Nominal ledger, customers, suppliers, open items and the trial balance. Older Sage installs often hold years of history — take it all, you are keeping the export.

4. 4

   Connect the bank and inbox

   Bizzle rebuilds recent invoices, receipts and payments from your feed and your email, which covers most of the recent period without importing.

5. 5

   Set opening balances

   The trial balance at the switch date becomes the starting position. With a long Sage history behind you, this is the step to have your accountant check.

6. 6

   Run parallel for a month

   Both systems, one month, then compare. Long-established setups accumulate quirks, and a parallel month is how you find them safely.

7. 7

   Archive properly

   Keep the exports somewhere durable. Records have to outlive the licence, and a desktop Sage install on an old machine is not an archive.

What people get wrong

• —Desktop Sage data lives on a machine rather than in an account. Get the export off it before anything happens to the hardware.
• —Long histories carry old nominal codes that no longer mean anything. Migration is a good moment to retire them rather than faithfully copying them across.
• —Your accountant keeps a free Bizzle login through the change, which matters most in the year you switch.

What it costs you in time

Most small businesses are running within a day. The parallel month afterwards is not work, it is a safety net — you carry on as normal and compare the two at month end.

The step worth paying for is the opening balance. An hour of your accountant's time there saves an unpleasant afternoon later, and they keep a free Bizzle login afterwards.