How to export your data from Xero (and what doesn't come out)

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What happens to Xero data when you cancel

Xero's own FAQ is plain about it. When you cancel, the data in that subscription is archived, and "while archived, data held within the subscription cannot be accessed by anyone." Xero keeps it for up to seven years unless you ask for it to be deleted, and you get access back by reactivating the subscription, which means paying again.

Xero's UK FAQ adds that you cancel with one month's notice from inside Xero, and that a cancelled trial can't be reactivated, so export first. Unlike QuickBooks Online, there is no free read-only year to fall back on. Treat the day the subscription ends as the last day you can see your books.

What you can export

Xero says you can export your data at any time. There's no single company file; you export it piece by piece. Xero's menus change from time to time, so if a path below doesn't match, search Xero Central for the export by name.

The reports to run

Pick your switch date first, ideally the first day of a month or, better, of your financial year. Then export:

• Trial Balance as of the day before the switch date: every account's balance, your opening balances.
• Aged Receivables Detail and Aged Payables Detail as of the same day: each unpaid invoice and bill, by contact.
• Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss for each year you used Xero, for the archive.
• General Ledger Detail or Account Transactions for each year: every transaction, line by line, readable in Excel without Xero.
• Sales tax. Your filed GST/HST returns in Canada, or sales tax reports in the US.
• Payroll. If you ran payroll through Xero or a connected app, every pay run report and filed form.

Run the trial balance and the two aged reports in one sitting, with nobody entering anything. If they are exported at different moments, they can disagree.

What doesn't come out cleanly

• Which payment paid which invoice. Reports show payments, but rebuilding the links in another program is manual.
• Bank rules and bank feeds. Set them up again in the new program.
• Invoice themes. Save a PDF of a sample invoice to copy the layout.
• Tracking categories appear as columns on some reports, but not as a list you can load somewhere else.
• Users, repeating invoice settings and connected apps: note them down.

Setting up new books from the files

Moving years of Xero history into another program, transaction by transaction, is hard to do well without a dedicated importer. For most small businesses the better plan is to bring balances, not history: start the new books on your switch date with every balance and open item, and keep the Xero exports as the record of what came before. That is what accountants usually do at a year end anyway.

1. Chart of accounts. Load the accounts with their numbers. Xero's account types (Revenue, Current Asset, Direct Costs, Overhead and so on) need mapping to the new program's types.
2. Customers and vendors, each with what they owed, or were owed, on the switch date, taken from the aged reports.
3. Products and services, with prices and accounts.
4. The other balances from the trial balance: bank, card, loans, fixed assets, tax payable, equity. Bank balances should be the reconciled balance on the switch date.
5. Check. The new trial balance on the day before the switch date should equal Xero's, account by account. Our tie-out guide walks through it.

Doing it in AcboBooks

To be clear: AcboBooks has no Xero importer. It reads QuickBooks and Sage 50 data directly; Xero data comes in through Lists → Import from Excel or CSV. That screen imports customers, vendors, products and services, the chart of accounts, journal entries, invoices and bills from a spreadsheet. It recognises common column headings, checks every row, and posts everything or nothing.

• Accounts: load Xero's chart of accounts CSV. AcboBooks understands its own type names (Bank, Expense, Other Current Asset…) and a few common ones such as Revenue, Current Asset and Fixed Assets. Rename the rest in Excel first, for example Direct Costs to Cost of Goods Sold. An account can carry an opening balance and date, for balance-sheet accounts.
• Customers and vendors: add an Opening balance column with each one's total from the aged reports and the switch date. AcboBooks posts it as one opening invoice or bill per name, so it ages and can be paid. If you'd rather keep each open invoice separately, enter those invoices instead.
• Everything else in the trial balance goes in as account opening balances, or as one journal entry from a spreadsheet. Opening balances land in Opening Balance Equity; once all balances are in, move what's left there into your equity accounts.
• Bank transactions after the switch date come in as OFX, QFX or CSV statement files under Bank Feeds. AcboBooks doesn't connect to your bank live.

It takes an afternoon for a typical small business, longer if you have hundreds of open invoices. If you want history too, the journal import can bring Xero's general ledger in as journal entries, but they won't be real invoices and bills, so most people keep history in the Xero exports instead. Then do your first bank reconciliation from the switch date.

QuickBooks® is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc. Xero is a trademark of Xero Limited. Wave is a trademark of Wave Financial Inc. AcboBooks is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

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