St Aubyn Estates: 11 Sage 200 Entities Migrated to Xero
An 11-entity Sage 200 migration for a diverse West Cornwall estate, including WAP and Sicon history, restructuring, ApprovalMax, Xero training and VAT support.
The project.
St Aubyn Estates is a multi-entity West Cornwall estate business. The Sage 200 to Xero programme ultimately covered 11 entities and included historical considerations around WAP and Sicon as the group moved towards a Xero and ApprovalMax environment.
What the project included
- Historical Sage 200 migration
- WAP/Sicon transaction review
- Restructuring of offset activity
- Xero and ApprovalMax transition
- Full Xero training
- VAT and post-migration support
Historical approval activity could not simply be copied one-for-one.
Particular attention was required around transactions associated with the previous WAP and Sicon workflows. Some unauthorised transactions had subsequently been offset in Sage 200. Reproducing every historical entry independently in Xero could therefore have duplicated activity that did not represent the final accounting position.
We reviewed and restructured that part of the migration so the historical accounting position could be retained without unnecessarily recreating offset transactions in the destination.
Moving from the old approval environment to Xero and ApprovalMax.
The future process was not intended to be a copy of the old Sage 200 environment. The group integrated ApprovalMax alongside Xero, so the migration needed to distinguish between preserving historical accounting evidence and designing the workflow the team would use going forward.
Training, VAT and support after migration.
We provided full Xero training, migration reconciliation evidence, support around the VAT return and ongoing help as the finance team embedded the new system.
The client review was written before the programme finished.
Sarah Haigh's testimonial records eight businesses successfully migrated at the point the review was written. The engagement continued afterwards, including some of the larger entities, and the programme ultimately reached 11 entities. We keep the original review wording unchanged.
“We have now successfully migrated 8 businesses from Sage 200 to Xero with the help of Florentina and her team. We would highly recommend to anyone thinking of migrating to Xero.”
Sarah Haigh, St Aubyn Estates Ltd
What this project demonstrates
Historical approval-system activity often needs interpretation rather than literal duplication. A migration should preserve the accounting position while also allowing the future Xero ecosystem to be designed around the way the business wants to operate next.