Moving your books from other software

Were your books kept elsewhere, in bexio, Banana, Crésus or by your fiduciary? To Bill takes over your last balance sheet as your opening balance sheet: you do not have to enter the past again. This guide also shows how to post the documents To Bill already held before your books were opened.

Before you start

• Choose the date your books start in To Bill. The simplest: the first day of a financial year, with the balance sheet your fiduciary closed the day before.
• Ask your fiduciary for that balance sheet, or export the trial balance from your previous software on the last day of the financial year, after the closing entries.
• The balance sheet is taken over while you turn on accounting: see Turn on accounting.

You are coming from bexio

Coming from bexio takes over your contacts, your products, your open invoices and your trial balance. Open it from Settings › Integrations, or from Accounting › Catch-up once accounting is on.

Each card shows where to find the export in bexio. For contacts, products and open invoices, see Import from bexio. The trial balance is checked before you turn accounting on:

1. In bexio, export your account balances on the last day of the financial year: Accounting → Reports, as Excel or CSV.

2. In To Bill, on the Your trial balance card, click Check my trial balance (1).

3. Drop the file. To Bill reads it and shows the result. Nothing is saved.

4. Check the Legal form. If To Bill suggests another form that fits your balance sheet better, click Use it.

   

5. Read the Check (1): the trial balance must be Balanced, with as much on the debit side as on the credit side.

6. Read Accounts of your own in bexio (2): these accounts do not exist in the Swiss SME chart of accounts. For each one, To Bill suggests the parent account, for example 1020 Bank for a second bank account 1021. Note them down: you will need them when you turn accounting on.

The table at the bottom shows, for each bexio account, the To Bill account it will go to.

Take over the opening balance sheet

You do this in the wizard that turns accounting on, with the trial balance from bexio or from any other software.

1. Save the trial balance as a CSV file. If you exported it as Excel, open it and save it as CSV.

2. In the wizard, at the Starting point step, choose First day of the year + opening balance.

3. Under Opening balance, fill in the Source of the figures, for example “bexio trial balance at 31.12.2025”.

4. Click Import a CSV (1) and choose the file. To Bill fills in one line per account and skips the title and total lines.

   

5. Read the message below the lines. An account that does not exist in your chart of accounts keeps its line and its amount, flagged in red: click Create this account (3), which adds it to your chart of accounts with the number and name from your file, or choose another account on the line. Do not move its amount to another line: it would count twice. In the example, account 1021 “Raiffeisen compte épargne” keeps its CHF 15’000.

6. Check the indicator (2): it must show Balanced: debit = credit. If not, To Bill shows how much is missing and on which side. A trial balance exported from accounting software balances: a difference rather points to a missing line, to check first. See When debit and credit differ.

7. Click Check before opening, then open your books.

Your invoices still open

If To Bill holds invoices still open on the last day of the previous financial year, it reminds you of them above the lines, under What To Bill knows at 31.12.2025: they must be in your accounts receivable, on account 1100. Check that the amount in the trial balance covers them. Add this line adds their total if the line is missing. A 1100 line already imported counts as added.

The file format

To Bill reads a CSV file with, on each line, an account number followed either by the debit and the credit, or by a single balance, positive for a debit. A description column after the number is accepted. This is the format of most software: bexio, Banana, Crésus, Abacus, WinBIZ, or a spreadsheet.

Expenses and income

On the first day of a financial year, expense and income accounts start again from zero. If your trial balance still contains them, To Bill flags them: delete these lines, and carry the profit or loss of the year to an equity account, for example 2979. Your fiduciary will tell you which one.

Once the books are open, compare the balance sheet of the first day with your fiduciary’s: see Balance sheet and income statement.

Take over your history in To Bill

Were you already invoicing with To Bill before you turned accounting on? The invoices, expenses and payments issued before your books were opened, and not yet posted, can be posted in one go, each on its original date.

1. Open Accounting › Catch-up. The number of documents not yet posted is shown, by type. At the top, Switch from bexio (1) leads to the takeover from bexio.

   

2. Read Breakdown by year: each year must be marked Ready to book. A year with no financial year in the books offers Create the missing financial years. A year inside a closed financial year must first be reopened, from the year-end closing.

3. Click the Post button (2): it shows the number of documents.

4. Read the result. The catch-up runs in batches: if documents remain, click Continue the catch-up.

You can run the catch-up again safely: a document already posted is never posted twice. You need the right to keep the books to start it.

With an opening balance sheet

The documents dated before the first day of your books are summed up by your opening balance sheet. The catch-up does not post them a second time: it only takes the documents dated from that day on.