Switching from Xero
Your trial balance, aged receivables and payables, contacts and product catalogue come across from Xero; posted transaction history does not, and stays in Xero as your archive.
Xero is a well-established global cloud accounting platform with a Malaysian edition and a large third-party app store. If it fits your business, stay. What usually sends Malaysian owners looking is having to run payroll somewhere else: Xero's own Malaysian site says Xero doesn't offer native payroll in Malaysia and points to payroll apps in the Xero App Store (xero.com/my, checked August 2026). Taokeh puts the books and the statutory payroll on one ledger. Here's exactly how the move works.
Each one comes from what the product itself publishes. If none of them is your situation, staying is the right answer.
Xero's Malaysian site is direct about it: "In Malaysia, Xero doesn't offer native payroll, but it integrates with Malaysian payroll solutions available through the Xero App Store" (xero.com/my, published July 2026). So in Malaysia you are paying for Xero and paying for a payroll app, and setting both of them up, before a single payslip goes out.
The Malaysian payroll apps on the Xero App Store work by pushing payroll data across so that journals or bills appear in Xero. It is a good integration and it is still two systems that have to agree: EPF, SOCSO, EIS and PCB are computed in one place and land in the other. In Taokeh they are computed in the ledger they post to, so there is nothing to reconcile between them.
The app store is genuinely good — thousands of add-ons, and a real reason to be on Xero. The catch is that you end up assembling and maintaining your own setup: an app for payroll, something else for the local bits, each with its own renewal date, its own support queue and its own copy of your customer list to keep tidy.
Once payroll is a separate app, every joiner, leaver and salary change has to be right in both systems — the app that computes EPF, SOCSO, EIS and PCB, and the ledger the journal lands in. None of that is hard. It is a second place to be wrong, and the kind of thing nobody notices until an EA form is being checked in February.
| Your data | Comes across? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Trial balance | Yes | Upload your Xero trial balance, as CSV or Excel. Taokeh matches each account to your chart, and you confirm every figure before a line posts. |
| Customers and suppliers | Yes | Import your Xero contacts export, so every name and detail is ready before your first document. |
| Aged receivables | Yes, invoice by invoice | Your Xero aged receivables detail report becomes your opening customer balances. |
| Aged payables | Yes, bill by bill | Your Xero aged payables detail report becomes your opening supplier balances. |
| Products and opening stock | Yes | Your product list and opening quantities, reconciled to the cent before the wizard lets you lock. |
| Posted transaction history | No | It stays in Xero as your archive. Taokeh starts from a locked opening balance dated on your cutover date. |
You need four things out of Xero, as CSV or Excel: a trial balance, an aged-receivables detail report, an aged-payables detail report, and your contacts export. The wizard reads the column headers, matches each account to your chart with a guess you can change, and you confirm every figure before a single line posts.
Pick the day your Taokeh books begin — usually your last day in Xero. Every opening figure is dated on or before it.
Export your trial balance from Xero as CSV or Excel and upload it. Taokeh matches the header names — code, account, debit, credit, or a single signed balance — reads your figures, and suggests where each account maps in your chart. You adjust anything, then confirm.
Import your customer and supplier lists so every name and detail is ready before you raise your first document.
Upload your aged-receivables report so who-owes-you-what carries across, invoice by invoice.
Same for what you owe — your aged-payables report becomes your opening supplier balances.
Bring your product list and opening stock, run the reconciliation drill-down until every difference is explained, then lock your opening balances and you're live.
Most services businesses land their opening balances in one evening, unassisted. If you carry stock, the wizard reconciles your opening inventory to the cent before it lets you lock — so trading businesses tie out cleanly rather than quickly. Either way, nothing posts until you've confirmed it, and a line-by-line reconciliation explains any difference.
The wizard parses your amounts deterministically and ties them to your file's own total, to the cent. AI is used for one thing only: suggesting where an unmatched account belongs in your chart — a suggestion you accept or overrule. No number is ever invented, and nothing posts unconfirmed.
Connect the AI assistant you already use — Claude, ChatGPT and more — and just ask: “How were sales this month?”, “Who owes me money?” It reads your live books and files drafts you approve; it can never post on its own.
You do not have to buy anything extra to get the AI. The RM45 base has it already: a built-in assistant answers your how-do-I questions anywhere in the app — where a setting lives, how to raise a credit note — and on the /go screen you type what happened in plain language and the entry is drafted for you, with 10 AI credits a month included and more available as a pack. Then, if you want your own AI in your books, the Ask Taokeh connector adds RM29 a month — RM74 a month all in, since the connector runs on top of the base — and the assistant you already pay for reads your live books and your payroll and files drafts you approve. It can never post on its own.
Connect Shopee, TikTok Shop and Shopify and orders land as invoices with the platform fee already netted — each payout tied to your bank deposit, with no separate reconciliation tool to subscribe to.
Full statutory payroll — EPF, SOCSO, EIS, PCB, HRDF and zakat. LHDN confirmed our PCB (MTD) 2026 calculation in writing (letter ref 2026-256, August 2026), and a consolidated e-invoice we submitted came back Valid on LHDN's MyInvois preproduction portal.
RM45 a month covers the books, the MyInvois e-Invoice export and payroll for your first 2 staff — then RM5 per extra staff per month. No second subscription for payroll, no monthly file to carry between two systems, and only the add-ons you switch on. Your data is always yours: full export, any time.
Every claim above has a receipt — see the proof page.
Worth seeing all of them side by side before you move anything.
Capability lines only. No prices, and no claim about which one suits your business — that depends on your books.
Your history stays where it is — keep your Xero account open long enough to download the reports you want as your archive. Taokeh starts you from a clean cutover: your trial balance, open invoices and bills, contacts and opening stock become your opening position, and you carry on from there. You're not re-keying a year of transactions.
A trial balance, your aged receivables and aged payables, and your customer and supplier lists — as CSV or Excel. Xero exports all four from its own reports. Bring the ones you have and come back for the rest; the wizard saves your progress.
It reads any trial balance or aged report whose columns it can name. It matches your header names against a long alias list — "account code", "a/c code", "nominal code", "debit", "dr", "closing balance" and so on — and asks you to point at anything it can't place. It has not been tuned to one specific Xero layout, so expect to confirm a column or two on the first pass. Nothing posts until you do.
That is the usual reason people look. Xero's own Malaysian site says Xero doesn't offer native payroll in Malaysia and points to payroll apps in the Xero App Store (xero.com/my, checked August 2026). In Taokeh, EPF, SOCSO, EIS, PCB, HRDF and zakat run in the same ledger as the books — no second subscription, no monthly file to move between two systems. LHDN confirmed our PCB (MTD) 2026 calculation in writing (letter ref 2026-256, August 2026); that letter covers the calculation, not a blanket product endorsement.
If you run a services business, most people finish their opening balances in an evening. If you carry stock, plan a little longer: the wizard ties your opening inventory out to the cent before it lets you lock. There's no rush — you can stop and resume anytime.
Yes — start a free 14-day trial, no card required, and run the switch wizard on your real reports. The trial is the base plan plus the Ask Taokeh connector; add-ons stay off until you switch them on. Nothing posts to your books until you confirm and lock.
The app store, plainly. Xero's third-party app ecosystem is far larger than our integration list, and if your business runs on a Xero-connected app we don't cover, that is a real reason to stay — we would rather say so than sell you a move you regret. What we cover ourselves: Shopee, TikTok Shop, Shopify, bank statement import, e-Invoice and payroll. Check that list against what you actually use before you move anything.
Start a free trial and open the switch wizard — your trial balance and aged reports become your opening balances, tied to the cent.