How to switch bookkeepers without losing your history

Most contractors who want to change bookkeepers stay a year longer than they meant to, and it is almost always the same reason: switching sounds like it will be painful and disruptive, and the current arrangement is at least a known quantity.

Done in the right order it is about a week of actual attention, and most of that is waiting for someone else. Here is the order.

Before you say anything

Confirm you own the file. Log in and check you are the primary admin on the accounting subscription, not a user on theirs. If the file lives on their account, that is the first thing to change and it is easier to arrange as an administrative matter now than as part of a departure conversation.

Check you hold the bank logins. Not your bookkeeper's access — yours.

Take a backup. A full export of the accounting file, stored somewhere of your own, dated today.

None of that is adversarial and none of it needs explaining. It is ordinary hygiene, and it is the difference between a smooth switch and a fortnight of chasing.

Line up the replacement first

Do not resign before you have somewhere to go. A gap in the middle of a year is how filings get missed, and payroll and sales tax deadlines do not pause while you interview.

Overlap is better than a gap. If you can arrange for the new firm to do a month while the old arrangement is still running, you get the one thing no reference or sales call gives you: the same period, done both ways, side by side. It costs you nothing extra if that first month is free, and it removes almost all of the risk from the decision.

That comparison is also the fastest way to find out whether your current books were fine all along, which is a perfectly good outcome.

Timing: the myth and the reality

The myth: you have to switch at the start of a financial year.

The reality: mid-year is completely normal and often better. The last closed quarter is a natural break; the new firm picks up from a reconciled point rather than inheriting a part-finished quarter.

The one timing rule worth keeping: do not switch in the middle of your busiest filing period. Changing hands two weeks before a deadline, with neither party fully across the file, is the version of this that goes wrong.

What to get from the outgoing firm

Ask by email, so there is a record. A specific list, not "everything":

• Admin ownership of the accounting file, transferred
• The last reconciliation report for every account
• Which periods are closed and which are not
• Payroll records and filings for the current year
• Sales tax filings and the workpapers behind them
• Depreciation schedules and the fixed asset register
• Loan amortisation schedules
• Anything held outside the software — spreadsheets, receipt folders, unfiled paperwork
• Anything in progress, and where it got to

Depreciation schedules and the fixed asset register are the two most commonly forgotten and the most annoying to reconstruct. Ask for them by name.

Your records are yours. Workpapers a firm produced may be theirs; the accounting file and the underlying documents for a business you own are not leverage. If someone treats them that way, stop negotiating and take advice.

Then verify, before you trust it

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters.

Do not assume the books are in whatever state the last report said. Reconcile the last closed month yourself: ending balance on the bank statement against ending balance in the file, same date. If they do not agree, that month was not reconciled whatever the report claimed. There is a method for finding the difference.

Then check:

• Uncleared items sitting for months
• A suspense or "ask my accountant" account with a balance in it
• Whether payroll liabilities clear to zero after each deposit
• Whether the balance sheet has anything negative that should never be negative
• That filings you believe were made actually appear in the filing portals

A good incoming firm does all of this as a matter of course and gives you a written statement of the position they found. Ask for that explicitly — it protects both of you, because it establishes what was inherited rather than what was created.

Be straightforward with the outgoing firm

You do not owe an explanation, but a short professional note gets a better handover than silence. Give a date, ask for the list above by that date, and say thank you if it is warranted.

Two things to avoid: do not use the handover request as a place to relitigate the relationship, and do not tell them what the new firm found. Neither improves your outcome and both slow the handover down.

If it ended badly — they went quiet, or you suspect something worse — that is a different situation with a different sequence.

The week, roughly

The only part that takes real time is waiting, and the only part that takes real attention is the verification.

Related

• What to ask before you hire a bookkeeper
• Nine ways to tell whether your bookkeeper is doing a good job
• Your bookkeeper just quit. Do these things first