Sage Intacct Exit Checklist
Seven Things To Export Before You Cancel Sage Intacct
The standard CSV export gives you a general ledger. It does not give you the dimensional structure, the allocation logic or the documents attached to your transactions. When the contract ends the instance goes read only, then dark, and the API dies with it. Pull these while you still have a login.
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A Flat File Is a Ledger, Not a System
Sage Intacct is worth paying for because it is multi dimensional. Transactions carry location, department, project, class and whatever custom dimensions you built, and the reporting sits on top of that structure rather than on top of the account code.
A transaction export flattens all of it. You get the values that were posted. You do not get the hierarchy that gave them meaning, the rules that generated some of them, or the paperwork that supports them. Those live in configuration and in document storage, and a CSV of transactions has never touched either.
This only becomes visible later. Nobody notices on cancellation day. It surfaces the first time somebody needs a prior year allocation schedule for an audit and there is no longer a system to ask.
Seven Exports, In the Order They Hurt To Lose
Run all seven while the contract is live and you still have API access.
- 01
Dimension Structures and Their Hierarchies
Not the flat list of values. The parent and child relationships, the groups, and the rules controlling which dimensions are required on which transaction types. Rebuilding a hierarchy from a flat list is guesswork.
- 02
Statistical Accounts and Their Full History
Headcount, square footage, units, whatever drives your allocations and your per unit reporting. These are not financial accounts, so they are routinely missed by an export scoped to the general ledger, and they are the inputs your allocations depend on.
- 03
Allocation Definitions, Smart Rules and Smart Events
The automation never appears in a data export because it is not data. It is configuration. This is also the least documented part of most implementations, and often the part only one person ever fully understood.
- 04
Recurring Transaction Templates and Their Schedules
Both the template and the schedule. Knowing that a recurring entry existed is not the same as knowing what it posted, to which dimensions, and on what cadence.
- 05
Custom Report and Financial Statement Definitions
Row structures, column structures, filters and computed lines. A PDF of last year’s statements proves what the numbers were. The definition proves how they were built, which is what an auditor actually asks about.
- 06
Supporting Documents Attached To Transactions
Invoices, receipts and approvals sitting in Intacct document storage rather than in the transaction tables. This is usually the largest export by volume and the one most often left until last, which is exactly the wrong order.
- 07
Roles, Permission Sets and Approval Workflows
Your control environment. Who could approve what, and to what threshold. If you are audited on a period covered by that instance, this is documentation you will be asked for and can no longer produce.
Thirty Days Early, Not On the Last Day
Give Yourself a Second Attempt
Run the full extraction at least thirty days before cancellation. The point is not the extra time to work. It is that when you find a missing object, and you will, you still have a live instance to go back to. On the last day you do not.
Reconcile Each Export Against a Live Report
Before you trust a file, tie it back to a report you can still run in the system. An export that is silently truncated looks exactly like an export that is complete, right up until the system is gone and there is nothing left to compare it to.
Negotiate a Read Only Grace Period
Ask for it in the exit terms rather than after. A short read only window costs the vendor very little to grant while the relationship is still commercial, and it is close to impossible to obtain once the account is closed.
Separate What Must Move From What Must Be Retained
These are different jobs with different costs. Open balances and current year detail generally have to land in the new system. Ten years of closed history usually has to be readable, not live. Sorting this early is what keeps a migration from becoming a rebuild.
Cancelling the Contract Does Not Cancel the Obligation
| Situation | IRS Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Standard case, none of the below applies | 3 years |
| You file a claim for a loss from worthless securities or a bad debt deduction | 7 years |
| You omit income greater than 25% of the gross income shown on the return | 6 years |
| Employment tax records | At least 4 years after the tax becomes due or is paid, whichever is later |
| No return filed, or a fraudulent return | Indefinitely |
Your subscription term has no relationship to any of these periods. Note also that a US organization has no in-country storage requirement equivalent to those some other jurisdictions impose, so the risk here is not where the records sit. It is whether you can still open them once the login stops working.
There is a second exposure that catches multi-state organizations and that a general ledger export does not cover. Sales tax registrations, filing history and the nexus determinations behind them frequently live as configuration and attached filings rather than as transactions. State statutes of limitation vary and are commonly longer than the federal period where a return was never filed in that state.
What actually carries across in a Sage Intacct move, and what has to be retained rather than migrated, is set out on our Sage Intacct migrations page.
Exiting Intacct, Answered
How long does the instance stay available after cancellation?
It varies by agreement, and it is set out in your contract rather than by general policy. Assume nothing and read the termination clause. The pattern to plan around is that access degrades to read only and then ends, and that API access is usually the first thing to go, which matters because the API is how bulk extraction is done.
Can we just keep paying for one seat to preserve access?
Sometimes, and it is worth asking. It is rarely cheap, because subscription pricing is not usually structured to support a single archival user, and it leaves your records dependent on a vendor relationship you have already decided to end. Treat it as a bridge while you extract, not as a retention strategy.
Which of the seven gets missed most often?
Attached documents, because the volume makes them feel like a separate project, and statistical accounts, because they do not look like accounting data. Allocation logic is the most expensive to lose, since it has to be reconstructed from the outputs rather than recovered.
Do we need all of this if we are moving to QuickBooks?
You need all of it retained. You do not need all of it migrated, and trying to migrate all of it is a common way to make a straightforward move expensive. Dimensional structure usually maps to classes, locations and projects with deliberate simplification, and the parts that do not map are retained as records rather than rebuilt.
We are not cancelling yet. Is this premature?
No, and mid term is the cheapest time to do it. Extraction while you are not under a deadline is a routine afternoon. Extraction with a cancellation date in the calendar is a project with a hard stop, and every problem you find is one you have less time to solve.
We Will Walk Your Instance and List What Does Not Come Out
A short working session against your actual configuration rather than a generic checklist. We identify what a standard export leaves behind, what has to be retained for audit purposes, and what genuinely has to move.
No obligation to migrate.
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