How to brief cloud accounting software or migration requirements

What to put in a cloud accounting or migration brief

A brief for cloud accounting software or a migration should describe your entities, the transactions you process and who approves them, the data you need moved, the reports leadership and your accountant rely on, and your tax position. Written down, it lets vendors respond to your actual operation instead of running a generic demo, and it becomes the checklist for accepting the system later.

Keep it short enough that a vendor will read all of it, and specific enough that two vendors reading it would propose comparable things. Plain descriptions of how the company works today matter more than a wish list of features.

Describing your company structure and who uses the system

Start with the shape of the organisation. List each legal entity that keeps books, which ones are SST-registered, the currencies they trade in, and whether any share customers or suppliers. Note branches or divisions that need separate reporting even though they sit inside one entity.

Then describe the people. Cover the finance team's roles and who handles which tasks, and include people outside finance who will touch the system, such as sales coordinators who request invoices, department heads who approve bills, and your external accountant. A vendor cannot design roles and permissions without knowing who needs them. Note any segregation rules you already follow, such as the person who creates suppliers being barred from releasing payments, so the vendor can show how its permissions enforce them.

Explaining how transactions flow today

For each main process, write a short paragraph: how a sale becomes an invoice, how a supplier bill becomes a payment, how receipts are matched, and how the month is closed. Name the documents involved and the approval steps. Say plainly where work currently happens outside the accounting system, such as invoice registers in Excel or approvals on chat.

Give a sense of scale: roughly how many invoices and bills you process each month, how many active customers and suppliers you have, and how many users need logins. Vendors price and configure around these figures, and an honest picture avoids surprises after signing.

Mark what must not change. Some steps exist for good reasons, such as a customer that requires its purchase order number on every invoice or a board rule on payment approvals. Others are habits nobody would defend. Separating the two tells vendors where you expect them to fit your process and where you are open to theirs.

Listing the data the migration must cover

Be explicit, because 'migrate our data' means different things to different vendors. Name an owner in your team for each item and state who will clean it: your staff, the vendor, or both.

• Chart of accounts, with any restructuring you want to make at the same time
• Customer master records, cleaned and de-duplicated
• Supplier master records, with bank details verified before loading
• Product and service list with the tax treatment of each item
• Opening balances for every balance sheet account at the cutover date
• Open customer invoices and unpaid supplier bills, listed individually
• Historical invoices for reference, and the period you want carried over

Stating reporting, tax and accountant requirements

List the reports you produce today and who reads them: management P&L by division, balance sheet, AR aging for collections, AP listings for payment runs. Attach a sample of each with sensitive figures removed, so vendors can see the layout leadership expects.

Describe your tax position without assuming the vendor knows it: whether invoices carry SST, and where you stand on e-invoicing through LHDN's MyInvois system. Scope and requirements for both change, so state what your tax agent has advised and ask vendors how their product keeps pace. Do not ask a software vendor to decide your tax obligations.

Finally, describe how your external accountant works with you now and how you want that to change, including whether they should sign into the new system directly.

Running vendor sessions against the brief

Send the brief before any demo and ask each vendor to walk through your processes with your sample data, not their standard script. Score responses against the brief, and note anything a vendor says is possible only through customisation or a third-party add-on.

Ask who will do the setup and migration work, and what your own team must provide. A proposal that assumes your staff will clean and format every data file needs a different internal plan from one where the vendor takes that on.

If BukuCloud is on your list, it covers invoicing with SST calculation, bills and supplier payments, P&L, balance sheet and AR aging reports, and accountant access through a free firm-staff seat or a Practice console link. Fasttrade can also migrate customers, products, opening balances and historical invoices. See bukucloud.com.

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