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TL;DR: We switched from MYOB to Xero to modernise our family business and prepare for future growth. The move brought a cleaner interface, better integrations, and easier reporting — but migrating old data, customising invoices, and adjusting workflows were more challenging than expected. It was stressful, but the end result is a faster, more flexible system that’s worth it.
We’d been using MYOB AccountRight for years. It did what we needed, but the interface felt clunky and dated — like driving an old car that still gets you from A to B, but you know deep down it’s time for an upgrade. With a new ABN and a fresh chapter for the business, this felt like the right moment to change.
Before we took over, I was already getting frustrated with MYOB. It’s powerful software and does the job, but I was worried about how well it would support us as we moved into a more digital space.
We knew that one day we’d probably move into e-commerce, and when that happened, we’d need:
My role at Signs Plus is on the technology side — and, honestly, I can’t stand accounting. Our bookkeeper handles the day-to-day numbers, and our accountant (who’s been with us since the business started in 1992) recommended we switch to Xero.
When I compared MYOB, QuickBooks and Xero, Xero stood out thanks to its massive app marketplace. I thought of it like WordPress plugins: the more integrations, the better. Xero’s online community and support ecosystem were also much larger. Although Xero can be slow to respond directly (they often rely on users to help each other), there’s a wealth of shared knowledge out there — and that gave me confidence it would be supported well into the future.
Our first major challenge was importing contacts. Xero only allows 1,000 contacts at a time, and because Signs Plus has been around for decades, we had close to 20,000 contacts — some outdated, some duplicated, some belonging to companies that no longer existed. Many schools had multiple campuses, and some suppliers were also clients. It was a mess.
In hindsight, we should have started fresh. Xero doesn’t let you delete contacts — only archive them — which quickly clutters things. To make matters worse, our accountant wasn’t experienced with this kind of migration. The CSV files weren’t cleaned before importing: phone numbers were inconsistent, names were in the wrong columns, and duplicates were everywhere.
What we learned:
One of the small but important customisations we carried over from MYOB was showing the salesperson’s name on invoices. It’s not about job tracking or production — it’s purely a time-saver. If a customer calls with a question, they can instantly see who handled their order, which saves us from having to dig through records or chase people internally.
In Xero, the only way to record this is by using Tracking Categories. We created a category called “Sales Person” with each team member’s name listed as an option. When we create an invoice, we simply choose the correct name from the dropdown. It works well internally — the information is saved in Xero and can be used for reporting — but the catch is that it doesn’t appear on the printed invoice PDF. That means customers never see it, which takes away the small convenience we were trying to preserve.
Customising invoice templates in Xero is also more awkward than it was in MYOB. Instead of editing layouts directly in the software, you have to download a Microsoft Word .docx template, make changes there using a mix of formatting and Xero-specific merge fields, then upload it back into Xero. Even small tweaks can take a few attempts to get right, and formatting issues are common. Our accountant struggled with this process, so we hired a specialist to help us get started. After studying their work and spending some time with Xero’s documentation, I can now handle most of it myself — but it’s definitely not as straightforward as MYOB.
At the end of the day, Xero is built to be a reliable accounting system, not a fully flexible custom solution. It does the fundamentals really well, but small touches — like showing the salesperson’s name on an invoice — require workarounds and compromises that feel unnecessarily complicated.
The team’s biggest frustration is contact management. Xero doesn’t make it easy to store multiple addresses, phone numbers or contact people under one profile. If a client has both a head office and a warehouse, you need to create two separate contacts — and that gets messy quickly.
Search is another sore point. Unless you type the full name almost exactly, contacts often don’t show up. Sorting is also unintuitive: invoices are ordered alphanumerically, so “INV-10” appears before “INV-2”.
Despite these frustrations, there are definite positives:
I won’t sugar-coat it — switching accounting systems was stressful. There were times I questioned if we’d made the right decision. The reality is that your business processes grow around your accounting software, so changing platforms isn’t just a software change — it’s a shift in how you operate day to day.
If I had my time again, here’s what I’d do differently:
Despite the chaos, we’ve ended up with a more modern, flexible setup that’ll grow with us. Xero has its quirks, but it’s cleaner, faster and more future-proof than MYOB — and we’re in a better place now than when we started.
Would I do it again? Yes — but with a better plan.
If you’re thinking about switching from MYOB to Xero, learn from our experience:
It’s not an easy journey, but on the other side, it really can be worth it.
