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Conversion guide: CCH Small Firm Services Client Accounting Suite to Accounting CS

Conversion notes and exceptions

The following sections detail all known conversion exceptions between data from CCH Client Accounting Suite and the converted data in Accounting CS. Conversion exceptions may include differences in field lengths between CCH Client Accounting Suite and Accounting CS, required parsing of information from 1 field in CCH Client Accounting Suite to multiple fields in Accounting CS, manipulation of CCH Client Accounting Suite data to conform with Accounting CS requirements, and so on.

Adjustments to prior-year balances

If you need to make an adjustment for a prior-year account balance in Accounting CS after the client’s data has been converted and imported into Accounting CS, go to
Actions
Enter Trial Balance
 and enter the correct balance directly into the corresponding column for the prior year.

Bank reconciliation

We recommend that you reconcile accounts through the most current month. All transactions are converted into Accounting CS as cleared for the bank reconciliation. Therefore, if any transactions are outstanding at the time of the conversion, you will need to enter the transactions in the
Edit
Initial Open Items
 window available from the
Actions
Reconcile Bank Accounts
 screen.

Chart of Accounts mask

For information about setting up the Chart of Accounts mask, see
Set up the chart of accounts mask
 in our Help and Support.

Pay and deduction items

Pay and deduction items are converted based on the Pay / Deduction Description plus the code for each item to provide uniqueness for similarly named items.
When converting a multi-state client, any pay or deduction items marked as “exempt” in the Tax Reporting section will be converted as exempt for all states used by the client. For details about editing for taxability status, see
Set up payroll items
 in our Help and Support.
SDI is automatically updated in Accounting CS with the correct disability rate per state.

Email addresses

Email addresses may only contain the following special characters:
  • ^
  • _
  • %
  • !
  • *
  • $
  • ?
  • #
  • =
  • {
  • }
  • |
  • '
  • .
  • @
  • "
Any email addresses with anything other than these special characters will be removed during conversion, see the PDF conversion report for a list of removed email addresses.

Employee earnings and withholding balances

A single check that was entered and posted into CCH Client Accounting Suite that contained multiple departments is converted, and the totals are combined into 1 amount whenever possible.
However, due to software differences between CCH Client Accounting Suite and Accounting CS, some CCH Client Accounting Suite data can't be converted.
Due to differences between CCH Client Accounting Suite and Accounting CS, we suggest that clients that have employees with multiple states/localities be converted without earnings. For details and examples, see
Multi-state withholding calculation examples
 in our Help and Support.
See also
Enter employee historical earnings
 in Help and Support.

Employee W-4 information

Because this is an after-the-fact payroll conversion, filing status and exemptions are not converted. After the conversion is complete, the
Use 2020 (or newer) W-4
 checkbox is marked. Accounting CS marks this checkbox by default, you may however, clear the checkbox and select the
2019 (or Prior) W-4
 option if necessary. See
Update W-4 information
 in our Help and Support.

General ledger period-end and year-end dates

If the CCH Client Accounting Suite client doesn’t use the month-end dates for the period-end dates, verify that the period-end dates in Accounting CS match the dates in CCH Client Accounting Suite.
Due to differences in data structures between the applications, 13-period and 52-period clients are converted as monthly clients. After the conversion process, you will need to complete some additional setup changes for these clients in Accounting CS. For more information, see
Change a client’s processing frequency
 in our Help and Support.
To print a copy of the client’s period-end dates in CCH Client Accounting Suite, go to
Setup and Maintenance
Accounting Period Maintenance
, press the ALT key, select
Print
, select a printer, then press F5.

Journal transactions

Five years of transactions are converted into Accounting CS.
The conversion is designed to group transactions with the same reference number into a single journal entry comprising all distributions that make up that entry. Journal transactions display in the General journal for the posting period in which the transactions occurred. Complete the following steps to transfer entries to a different journal once the conversion is complete.
  1. Go to
    Actions
    Enter Transactions
    , then select
    Edit Multiple Transactions
     in the
    Enter Transactions
     screen.
  2. Select
    Edit
     from the
    Action
     dropdown.
  3. Select
    Journal
     from the dropdown in the
    Transactions
     section, then select the new journal name.
  4. Mark the checkbox next to each item you want to transfer, then select
    OK
    .
Due to differences in the options available for entering transactions in CCH Client Accounting Suite, you may need to enter some adjustment transactions to balance accounts.

Phone numbers

If a phone number is an incorrect length and doesn’t have enough digits, the telephone number is converted with extra zeros for the correct length. We convert the CCH Client Accounting Suite Contact Extension found in
Lists
Client Setup
Contact tab-Extension
 to Accounting CS client Business extension to provide the same detail as found in the CCH Client Accounting Suite client information screen.

Security

CCH Client Accounting Suite and Accounting CS both allow user-level security. However, the program can't convert user information, such as password, user rights, user name, authorizations, and so forth. You need to manually set up this information manually for the client in Accounting CS.

Terminated employees and inactive vendors

Inactive employees are converted.
Employees with a termination date or vendors marked as inactive in CCH Client Accounting Suite are converted to Accounting CS so that you can complete W-2s or 1099s for the current year. You will need to mark the
Include inactive
 checkbox in the
Setup
Employees
 screen or the
Setup
Vendors
 screen in Accounting CS.
Information from the
Vendor Account Ref
 fields is not converted. After the conversion and import process have been completed, enter that information in the
Account
 field of the
Setup
Vendors
 screen in Accounting CS.

Vendor data

Deductions that accrue during normal processing must be linked to a vendor in Accounting CS. To link to a vendor, select the vendor from the
Agent
 field on the
Main
 tab of the
Setup
Payroll Items
 screen for the deduction item in Accounting CS.

This article applies to:

  • Product: Accounting CS
  • Subject: Conversions

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