Switching from Xero to Lejar: a Malaysian guide

Why do Malaysian businesses switch?

Two reasons come up most. First, compliance: in Lejar the MPERS chart of accounts and bi-monthly SST-02 returns are built in from the first screen, not something you configure or bolt on. Second, cost and structure: Xero bills per organisation, so every company you run is another subscription. On the Business plan and above, Lejar holds several companies under one subscription, and you switch between their books under a single login instead of paying and signing in per company.

What should you export from Xero first?

• ·Pick a clean cut-over date, usually the start of a new month, quarter, or financial year.
• ·Your Xero trial balance, as at the day before the cut-over date, exported as a CSV.
• ·Your Aged Payables Detail and Aged Receivables Detail reports as CSVs, so your outstanding bills and invoices come across.
• ·Your list of customers and suppliers with their registration details, plus the bank statements covering the period from cut-over onward.

How do you bring your books across?

When you create the company in Lejar, choose the migrating option and Lejar opens its guided Xero flow. You upload the trial balance CSV, map each Xero account onto a Lejar account code, with anything unmapped flagged for you, and commit. Lejar posts a single opening-balance journal on your cut-over date: asset, liability, and equity balances come across as explicit lines, while the year-to-date profit and loss is absorbed into a retained-earnings figure so your balance sheet matches Xero exactly at cut-over. Your historical profit and loss stays in Xero, and Lejar runs forward from there.

Next, upload your Aged Payables and Aged Receivables detail CSVs to bring your outstanding bills and invoices in as open items, so your payables and receivables open at the right figures. If you hold any foreign-currency accounts, you set their opening balance in that currency. From then on, importing your bank statements keeps the books moving.

When is the best time to switch?

The cleanest time to move is the start of a new financial year, when there are no part-period balances to carry. The start of a new SST taxable period is the next best, so your first SST-02 from Lejar covers a whole period. A good practice is to run Lejar and Xero in parallel for at least one SST period before you rely on Lejar alone.