Which Platforms This Guide Covers
The migration path described here works for any platform that produces a standard Trial Balance and Chart of Accounts export. That includes:
QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. Full support. The most common migration path.
Xero. Full support. Trial Balance and CoA exports work identically to QuickBooks.
Zoho Books. Full support. Same migration mechanics.
FreshBooks (New). Supported, with caveats. Many FreshBooks users are on cash-basis books with limited Balance Sheet detail. Expect to spend extra time on accruals, deferred revenue, and A/R cleanup before generating your Trial Balance.
Finaloop. Supported. You may need to request your Trial Balance and CoA export from Finaloop support rather than self-serving. Their reporting is solid; the export experience just isn't as standardized.
If you're on a platform not listed here, reach out to support@runfutureproof.com and we'll help assess your migration path.
Two Setup Paths
Futureproof offers two ways to get started. Both deliver an accurate Balance Sheet from your cutover date forward. The only difference is which Chart of Accounts you use.
Path 1: Use the Futureproof Chart of Accounts (Recommended)
Best for founders running their own books or working without a dedicated finance partner. Our Chart of Accounts is optimized for SaaS and ecommerce companies between pre-seed and Series B. It's built around the metrics that matter at your stage: MRR, gross margin, burn, runway, and contribution margin by channel.
What you get:
AI categorization tuned to our account structure for highest accuracy
Smart Segments configured for your business model out of the box
Reports and dashboards that work without configuration
Fastest time to value, typically under one hour from sign-up to insights
What you'll need:
Trial Balance from your current platform as of your cutover date
Customer, vendor, invoice, bill, and product/service exports
Plaid connection to your bank accounts
Stripe connection (if you run a SaaS business)
Shopify or Amazon Seller Central connection (if you run an ecommerce business)
Path 2: Bring Your Own Chart of Accounts
Best for founders working with a fractional CFO, controller, or accountant who has already curated a Chart of Accounts they trust. If your finance partner has spent time refining your account structure, you keep that work.
What you get:
Your existing Chart of Accounts ported into Futureproof
AI categorization mapped to your account structure
Continuity for your finance team and reporting workflows
Same Balance Sheet integrity as Path 1
What you'll need:
Your Chart of Accounts exported from your current platform (CSV format)
Trial Balance from your current platform as of your cutover date, mapped to your CoA
Customer, vendor, invoice, bill, and product/service exports
Plaid connection to your bank accounts
Stripe, Shopify, or Amazon Seller Central connections as applicable
Both paths require a Trial Balance and the underlying records that drive your AR and AP workflows. The next section explains the order they come over in.
Choosing Your Cutover Date
Your cutover date is the day Futureproof becomes your system of record. The right date depends on the state of your books.
Best practice: cutover from your last clean reconciliation.
If your bank accounts were last reconciled through January 31, cutover at February 1. You bring forward an accurate Trial Balance from a period you already closed. Plaid pulls bank data from February 1 forward into Futureproof, and you reconcile the months since then inside Futureproof as part of your normal monthly close. No catch-up work in your old platform. Reconciliation happens once, in your new system.
If your books are current, pick a clean starting point:
First day of the current fiscal year. Best for tax alignment. Your prior year stays in your old platform; your new year lives in Futureproof.
First day of your current quarter. Useful if you're mid-year and want to start fresh without waiting until next January.
First day of the current month. Acceptable if you need to migrate immediately. Avoid mid-month cutovers; reconciliation gets messy.
One constraint: your cutover date can't be earlier than your last clean reconciliation. Plaid pulls historical data up to 24 months back, but if you cutover to a date before your last reconciliation, you'll have unreconciled activity that needs to be tied out before your Trial Balance is reliable. Reconcile first, then cutover.
The Migration Sequence
Migration runs in a specific order because each step depends on the previous one. You can't import invoices before customers exist. You can't import customer payments before invoices exist. Trying to skip steps causes failed imports and data integrity issues.
Futureproof manages this sequence automatically when you migrate. Your role is to prepare each export and confirm validation at each phase. Here's the order:
1. Chart of Accounts. Either Futureproof's (Path 1) or your own (Path 2). This is the foundation everything else references.
2. Customers and Vendors. These are reference records that invoices and bills will point to. Both come over before any transactional data.
3. Products and Services. These reference your Chart of Accounts and are used as line items on invoices and bills.
4. Trial Balance (Opening Balances). Posts your account balances as of the cutover date.
5. Invoices and Bills. All statuses, with line items pointing to customers, vendors, and products imported in earlier phases.
6. Customer Payments, Credit Memos, and Bill Payments. These apply against invoices and bills imported in Phase 5.
7. Live Connections. Plaid, Stripe, Shopify, and Amazon Seller Central connect once historical data is in place. From here forward, Futureproof is your system of record.
Each phase validates before the next begins. If a phase fails (for example, a customer reference is missing on an invoice), the migration pauses and surfaces the issue before continuing. You won't end up with partially imported data sitting in your production environment.
If you're working with our team on a white-glove migration, we manage these phases for you and surface any issues as they arise. If you're self-serving the import, our migration tool walks you through each phase in order.
Preparing a Perfect Trial Balance
This is the most important step in your migration. A clean Trial Balance means an accurate Balance Sheet on Day 1 in Futureproof. A messy one means you'll spend weeks chasing discrepancies.
Most founders underestimate this step. Don't. Spend the time here and the rest of the migration is straightforward.
What a Trial Balance Is
A Trial Balance is a report that lists every account in your Chart of Accounts with its ending balance as of a specific date. Debits must equal credits. Total assets must equal total liabilities plus equity. If those equations don't balance, your books have errors that need to be fixed before migration.
Step-by-Step: Preparing Your Trial Balance
Step 1: Confirm your bank and credit card accounts are reconciled through your cutover date
Your cutover date should align with your last clean reconciliation. Confirm every transaction in your accounting platform matches your bank statements through that date. Outstanding items (uncleared checks, deposits in transit) should be documented.
If your last reconciliation was months ago, you have two choices: reconcile now in your old platform, or move your cutover date earlier and reconcile the catch-up months inside Futureproof. Either works.
Step 2: Record all outstanding bills and invoices
Every unpaid bill (Accounts Payable) and unpaid invoice (Accounts Receivable) should be entered in your accounting platform as of your cutover date. Anything missing means your A/P and A/R balances will be understated when they roll into Futureproof.
Run an A/P Aging and A/R Aging report. Verify the totals match what you actually owe and what's owed to you.
Step 3: Review and clean up accruals
Check these accounts for accuracy:
Prepaid expenses. Insurance, software subscriptions paid annually, and similar items. The remaining unused portion should be on your Balance Sheet as a prepaid asset.
Deferred revenue. Any cash collected for services not yet delivered. Critical for SaaS businesses with annual contracts.
Accrued expenses. Bills incurred but not yet received or paid (utilities, professional fees, payroll accruals).
If these accounts haven't been reviewed in a while, the balances are probably wrong. Clean them up now.
Step 4: Verify fixed assets and depreciation
If you have computers, equipment, or other depreciable assets, confirm:
The original cost is recorded correctly
Accumulated depreciation reflects all depreciation taken to date
Disposed assets have been removed
For most early-stage companies, this is a small list. For ecommerce businesses with inventory and equipment, it can be larger.
Step 5: Confirm equity accounts are accurate
Review:
Common stock and preferred stock. Should reflect actual issued shares from your cap table.
Additional paid-in capital. Cash raised from investors above par value.
Retained earnings. Cumulative net income from prior periods.
Current year net income. Your P&L from the start of the fiscal year through your cutover date, if you're cutting over mid-year.
This is where founders most often have errors. If your equity accounts don't tie to your cap table, fix this before migrating.
Step 6: Run the Trial Balance report
In your accounting platform, run the Trial Balance report with the date set to the day before your cutover date. The report should show:
Every account with a balance
Total debits equal to total credits
A clear list organized by account type (Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Revenue, Expenses)
Export this report as both a PDF (for your records) and a CSV or Excel file (for upload to Futureproof).
Step 7: Validate the Trial Balance against other reports
Cross-check your Trial Balance against:
Balance Sheet as of the same date. Total assets, liabilities, and equity should match.
P&L from the start of the fiscal year through the cutover date. Net income should match the current year earnings line on your Trial Balance.
A/R Aging. Total should match Accounts Receivable on your Trial Balance.
A/P Aging. Total should match Accounts Payable on your Trial Balance.
If anything doesn't tie out, find the discrepancy before migrating. Common culprits include unreconciled bank accounts, journal entries posted to the wrong period, and credit memos applied incorrectly.
Step 8: Lock the period in your old platform
Once your Trial Balance is clean, set a closing date in your old platform for the day before your cutover. This prevents anyone from accidentally posting entries that would change historical balances after migration.
Migrating Customers, Vendors, Invoices, and Bills
The Trial Balance gives you accurate account balances. But to actually operate from Day 1, you also need the underlying records that drive AR, AP, and invoicing workflows. Futureproof imports these as part of your migration in the sequence described earlier.
What Gets Migrated
Customers. All customer records including name, contact info, billing address, payment terms, and tax ID. Active and inactive customers both come over. Inactive ones stay searchable for historical reference.
Vendors. Same as customers, on the payable side. Includes 1099 designation and payment information needed for ongoing AP workflows.
Products and Services. Your active products and services catalog with pricing and revenue account mappings.
Invoices (all statuses). Every invoice from your old platform, regardless of status (Open, Paid, Partially Paid, Voided). Closed invoices are imported as reference records. They do not re-post to your General Ledger; their financial impact is already reflected in retained earnings on your Trial Balance. Futureproof generates invoice PDFs on demand from the imported data, so your historical invoice archive remains accessible.
Bills (all statuses). Same approach as invoices. All bills come over with their original metadata and status. Closed bills are reference records and do not re-post to the GL.
Customer Payments, Credit Memos, and Bill Payments. These apply against the invoices and bills they were originally tied to, preserving payment history.
For ecommerce businesses, you typically don't need to migrate your SKU catalog from QuickBooks. Your Shopify or Amazon connection becomes your product source of truth in Futureproof.
What You'll Need to Export
From your accounting platform, export the following as CSV files:
Customer list (all customers)
Vendor list (all vendors)
Products and Services list
Invoice list (all statuses, with line item detail)
Bill list (all statuses, with line item detail)
Customer payments and credit memos
Bill payments
Most accounting platforms support these exports natively. If you're on QuickBooks Online, all exports are available from the Reports and Lists menus. Xero, Zoho Books, and FreshBooks offer similar exports through their data export tools.
Deduplication Matters
Most accounting platforms accumulate duplicate customer and vendor records over time. "Acme Corp," "Acme Corporation," and "ACME CORP." often exist as three separate entries from different invoice templates or data entry moments.
Migration is the right moment to clean this up. Before uploading your customer and vendor CSVs, review for duplicates and merge them in your source platform first. If you skip this step, the duplicates carry forward into Futureproof and you'll spend time reconciling them later.
If your customer or vendor list is large (500+ records), our team can run a deduplication pass during import. Reach out to support if you need help.
Integrity Checks at Import
When your data uploads, Futureproof runs reconciliations at each phase to confirm the migration is accurate:
Open invoice total equals A/R on Trial Balance. The sum of all imported invoices marked Open or Partially Paid must match the Accounts Receivable balance on your Trial Balance.
Open bill total equals A/P on Trial Balance. The sum of all imported bills marked Open or Partially Paid must match the Accounts Payable balance on your Trial Balance.
Customer and vendor counts match expected totals after deduplication.
Payment applications tie to their original invoices and bills.
If any check fails, the import flags the discrepancy before completing. You resolve it before going live.
Your Historical Archive Comes With You
Because Futureproof imports invoices and bills regardless of status, your historical billing and payable archive is searchable inside the platform from Day 1. You can pull up any invoice from any year, regenerate the PDF, and reference it without logging back into your old platform. This is one reason founders find they need their old accounting platform less often than expected after migration.
Migration Quality Checklist
Before completing your migration, confirm:
Trial Balance
All bank and credit card accounts are reconciled through the cutover date
A/R Aging total equals Accounts Receivable on the Trial Balance
A/P Aging total equals Accounts Payable on the Trial Balance
Prepaid expenses, deferred revenue, and accrued expenses are accurate
Fixed assets and accumulated depreciation are current
Equity accounts tie to your cap table
Total debits equal total credits
Period is locked in your old platform
Records Migration
Customer list exported and deduplicated
Vendor list exported and deduplicated
Products and Services list exported (if applicable)
Invoice list exported with all statuses and line item detail
Bill list exported with all statuses and line item detail
Customer payments, credit memos, and bill payments exported
Sum of open invoices equals A/R on Trial Balance
Sum of open bills equals A/P on Trial Balance
Payment applications tie correctly to invoices and bills
If you can check every box, your migration will be accurate from Day 1.
What to Expect After Cutover
Once your data is uploaded and your accounts are connected, here's what happens:
Day 1: Your Balance Sheet reflects your opening balances. Your customer, vendor, invoice, and bill history is searchable. Plaid pulls bank transactions starting from your cutover date. Stripe begins syncing revenue data. AI categorization runs on incoming transactions.
Days 2-7: Review your first batch of categorized transactions. The AI flags low-confidence categorizations for your review. Confirming or correcting these trains the system to be more accurate over time.
End of Month 1: Run your first close in Futureproof. Reconcile your bank accounts, review your P&L and Balance Sheet, and confirm everything looks right. If anything's off, this is the time to catch it.
Month 2 and beyond: Categorization accuracy improves as the AI learns your patterns. Reports and dashboards become richer as more data flows in.
Optional: Keeping Your Old Platform for Reference
You're not required to keep your old accounting platform after migration, but many founders choose to maintain read-only access for historical reference. Reasons to keep it:
Tax filing for prior years
Audits or due diligence during a fundraise
Historical questions that come up months or years later
Because Futureproof imports your full invoice and bill history, you may find you need your old platform less often than expected. Most ongoing reference questions can be answered inside Futureproof directly.
If you're on QuickBooks Online specifically, Intuit retains your data for a defined period after cancellation, but access becomes limited. Review their official documentation on what happens to your data when you cancel: What happens to your QuickBooks Online data when you cancel.
If you decide to keep your old platform active, downgrade to the cheapest read-only tier. Standard record retention is seven years to align with IRS requirements. Before canceling, export everything you might need: your full General Ledger, all attachments and receipts, prior-year tax filings, and any custom reports your CPA relies on.
Need Help?
Migration is the most important step in your relationship with Futureproof. If your books need cleanup before you can produce a clean Trial Balance, or if your customer and vendor lists need deduplication, our team can help. Reach out via the support chat or email support@runfutureproof.com to schedule a migration consultation.
The goal is simple: a clean cutover, an accurate opening Balance Sheet, your full historical record carried forward, and a finance system you can trust from Day 1.