This could be your BIGGEST barrier to changing finance systems

There’s one fear above all others that holds people back from changing their finance software: 

What will happen to all the data in the old system? 

In this blog, we’ll cover: 

• Why finance people worry about losing data when they change systems 

• How some software vendors are scaremongering as a way to keep customers 

• What you should know about “right to use” (RTU) licences  

• How to change systems without having to pay your old vendor for access to data. 

The number one fear about changing accounting software 

We asked 1,000 finance decision makers in medium-sized organisations what was holding them back from changing their accounting software.  

The responses were decisive:  

• 42% feared losing their historical financial data and having to run two systems in parallel. 
• 32% cited the cost of a “right to use” (RTU) licence to keep seeing the data from their old system. 

Our research found a great deal of frustration with existing finance systems – their speed, their reporting capabilities and the need for lengthy manual work to produce meaningful information.

So it’s clear that many organisations would be switching software right away if not for fears about their past data.  

Moving data between finance systems 

Hanging on to several years of past finance data is useful to your organisation and necessary for compliance. 

As your old software vendor is likely to remind you, HMRC needs finance departments to keep six years’ worth of past data in case of inspection, in addition to the current year.  

The need to keep old data doesn’t mean you can never switch finance systems – otherwise nobody would ever be able to change their software.

But some vendors would be quite happy if you were under that impression. 

What is a “right to use” licence and how much does it cost?  

It might be mentioned in the small print of your contract, but the first time many people hear about a “right to use” licence is when they try to serve notice on their software supplier.  

An RTU licence can also be called a “read only licence” or an “archive licence”. 

As those other names imply, it’s a licence to carry on using a read-only version of your old system and your past data.  

iplicit has seen cases where the price quoted for an RTU licence was several times the cost of an annual licence for the fully-functioning version of the software.

And the costs can be even higher than that quote if your software is an on-premises system, since you’ll still have to keep that server on your site for another six years and pay to maintain it.  

Some vendors have even tried to argue that this can be justified on ROI grounds. But there’s no reason to be locked into a relationship with a vendor, just because you need to see old financial information.  

How do you retain finance data during a software transition? 

If you’ve been considering a change in system, only to be broadsided by an inflated quote for an RTU licence, your options are: 

• Stay with your current vendor. That’s hardly ideal, since there will have been good reasons you were looking at a change.  

• Budget for the RTU licence. Some users will just accept a costly read-only licence as an unfortunate cost of change.  

• Move the data to the new system. Depending on your new software, moving your old finance data into the new system can be seamless, secure and cost effective.   

How data migration can work with cloud accounting 

Your old vendor might have neglected to mention this – but moving your data to a new software system can be the best solution. 

Powerful cloud accounting software that benefits from an open API (application programming interface) allows for the easy migration of information from other systems. 

Be sure to ask any new supplier about the details, though – because if a vendor needs to reformat your data when it’s moved, that can be a huge task. 

With iplicit, your chosen historical data can be smoothly imported into the new system, where it sits behind a tab marked “Archive”.  

You can search, sort and filter the old data and examine past sales and purchases. Your historical trial balances and P&L are all retained and you can continue to view your sale and purchase transactions. The same accounting dimensions and analysis levels you had in the old systems are available in iplicit. 

That has to be a better option than paying large amounts to keep using software that you wanted to get rid of. 

Why we don’t use RTU licences 

Nobody likes to lose a customer. But scaremongering is no way to keep people with you.  

That’s why iplicit is against the practice of RTU licences and provides a safe and secure way to transfer old data into your iplicit system.

And in the unlikely event that a customer wants to leave us, we don’t use similar tactics. That’s because we believe in building a legion of fans, not hostages.  

Get in touch with us today if you have any questions or concerns around RTU licences.