Sholto Macpherson for Free BoxIT writes: A Mumbai accounting firm has launched a cut-price, software-automated conversion service for businesses moving from desktop software to Xero, a cloud-based accounting program.
M. Mehta and Company, a 60-year-old firm servicing over 500 government, industrial and mining clients near Mumbai, recently gained Xero add-on partner status for its online conversion service MMC Convert.
A basic conversion from QuickBooks or MYOB cost US$149 which included chart of accounts, contacts, and open receivables and payables. More complex conversions, which added payroll and transactional history, cost up to US$449.
“We guarantee to be the cheapest service,” said Ankit Mehta, partner at M. Mehta and Company, who attended Xero’s partner and customer conference in Sydney.
A handful of Xero conversion services, mainly based in Australia and New Zealand, have emerged to assist accounting firms move large numbers of clients from desktop software to Xero. Alternative services such as Click2Convert, JetConvert, XPress Convert, LiveMigrate and ConvertWorx.
M. Mehta and Company had begun software development a year and a half ago under the leadership of Mehtu’s wife Shanu, a computer sciences graduate.
“We have automated 95 percent of the conversion process,” Ankit Mehta said, which had reduced the bulk of the conversion from three days of manual importing to 30 minutes. The firm still added tax rates manually because Xero’s programming interface (API) for tax details had not been completed, he added.
Once Xero’s tax platform was launched in 2014 the conversion process could be fully automated. “We have spoken with the Xero technical team and already made the framework,” Ankit Mehta said.
Despite variations in accounting practices, the Mehtas claimed they could process data files with high accuracy. MMC Convert had successfully converted the sample files in QuickBooks which were “pretty complex”, Shanu Mehta, head of conversions, said.
MMC Convert could extract bank journals, debit notes, credit notes and complex files, added Shanu Mehta.
M. Mehta and Company already worked with businesses outside India. It provided white label accounting services to CPAs in Australia, New Zealand and the US, Ankit Mehta said. The firm had also carried out work on behalf of Deloitte.
“India is an English speaking country with a good set of skills in accounting and technology and it is much cheaper to employ additional staff,” Ankit Mehta said. Aside from Ankit and his father, the firm included 13 partners and 45 interns.
The Mehtas planned to fly to Xerocon in San Francisco the week after Sydney’s event. “We see a lot of potential in the US. QuickBooks is really prevalent there and Xero is pretty aggressive in the US,” Ankit Mehta said.
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