Our club intends to become a Company Limited By Guarantee (CLG) - I need a few questions clarified relating to how this impacts our use of Quickfile.
Existing members direct debits.
It is essential that existing direct debits are maintained. Since we will not be changing bank accounts (our Lloyds account is already a ‘business’ type account, I’m hoping that this will not be a problem for quickfile. QuickFike Account
Our existing Quickfile setup is as a sole proprietor. Do we need to change the account type, or is it enough to simply modify the chart of accounts to reflect the new business type. If we do need to create a new QuickFile account, then how would this impact matters such as our direct debits.
We also use Quickfile API’s to link into the Clubs membership system. If we do need to change our Quickfile Account then I’m expecting that some configuration changes will be needed here as well - hopefully just to the account credentials which are, mercifully, in a secure paramaters table.
If we do need to set up a new QuickFile account, i’d point out that I have not seen options for ‘Company Limited By Guarantee’ - which is very specific and does not have share capital - indeed cannot have share capital.
If there any other ‘gotchas’ that I need to know about, so if any of you have done this or know, I’d be most grateful for advice.
You may wish to review the nominals you are given and remove and add where applicable.
Clients/Direct Debits
If you maintain Direct debits within QuickFile these would need setting up on the new clients account on the new account.
We can copy over the Client and Supplier records (no activity) if you wish, just let us know when and provide both new and old account numbers.
API
On the API you can just replicate from one company to the other changing the account credentials
Click Create on the new companies API screen and replicate the settings from the old one (Account API Key will be different)
Other ‘Gotchas’
If you have a subscription with us, we may be able to transfer it to the new account depending on the remaining duration (Again Private message me with account details if required)
You can only create one QuickFile account per email address, would you have a new email address for the new company?
Direct Debits
It will be essential that, whatever process we chose, does not entail the members having to create new Direct Debits themselves. I am hoping that, when the members (Sales Ledger) is set up in the CLG version that the presence of the direct debit will be detected, or that tagging information will be available to enable an existing Direct Debit to be linked. I cannot stress the importance of the transfer being ‘incident free’ as far as our members are concerned.
If you replicate the ledger as described by you (with no activity) this should do the trick. We will need to time this when activity on the ledger is at a minimum. API
This is totally as I would expect, The parameters are held in a some tables along with some hashing information for security. It should be entirely portable. EMail Address
We Intend to create a new email address for Quickfile admin in any case, so this will not be a problem.
Do let me know if you feel that I have misinterpreted your response - it is vital that the changeover runs without a hitch.
Just wanted to touch on one point here in addition to what @QFSteve mentioned.
If you’re changing legal entity, you can ask GoCardless to update your account and just update it for the new legal entity (I believe, without creating a new account). As long as the mandate references remain the same, they’ll continue to work within QuickFile as it’s a change done at GoCardless’ end.
But it would be a good idea, I think, to reach out to GoCardless directly to double check.
Many thanks for re-opening the Topic. Several Questions.
(1) Do we need to register the new Limited Company Limited By Guarantee (CLG) BEFORE we create the new CLG Ledgers on Quickfile. If we are able to set up our ledgers first, it would enable a lot of testing to take place before the actual legal commitment to be a CLG has taken place.
(2) My understanding is that our existing Sales Ledger accounts (Members ledger for us) will be copied over by Quickfile to the new CLG ledgers but without any transactions or recurring invoices. Please confirm.
(3) Assuming (2) above, I am also assuming that the copied over sales Ledger Accounts will have different Quickfile ClientID numbers. This not a problem, but I need to know if new ClientID’s will be created for the cpied over Sales Ledger accounts as I will need to reset a table on our system that the API uses to link the members database to Quickfile.
(4) There will be a period wheh the current and new (CLG) Quickfile ledgers will be used. The current ones being live until 31st December and the CLG ledgers having all the non transactional standing data set up, including Bank Accounts. Clearly we will not activate the bank feed on the CLG ledgers until a week or so before the 31st December, with a minimal period of parallell running to verify that the bank linkages are perfoming correctly.
(5) The most crucial question is preserving the members Direct Debits. Our club members can be a bit irritable about administration and some will not take kindly to having to create new Direct Debits. It is essential that these are preserved. On the advice of @QFMathew , I have raised this question with GoCardless. However, if there is anyone on this forum whio has gone through this process before, then I would welcome any advice.
Given all the above, is there any way at all that all this could be avoided - by that I mean, are Quickfile able to change our ledger type to Charity Limited and keep our existing systems intact.
Please note, we do not want any settings changed yet, at this point I am seeking answers to all the technical issues that may come up so that when we do ‘go for launch’ then the process will proceed as smoothly as possible.
(1) Do we need to register the new Limited Company Limited By Guarantee (CLG) BEFORE we create the new CLG Ledgers on QuickFile. If we are able to set up our ledgers first, it would enable a lot of testing to take place before the actual legal commitment to be a CLG has taken place.
You can create a QuickFile account at any time (the company number is an optional field). You can set up the account and do some testing first if necessary.
(2) My understanding is that our existing Sales Ledger accounts (Members ledger for us) will be copied over by QuickFile to the new CLG ledgers but without any transactions or recurring invoices. Please confirm.
We can copy the Client and Supplier ledgers across for you (as you say without any transactions).
(3) Assuming (2) above, I am also assuming that the copied over sales Ledger Accounts will have different QuickFile ClientID numbers. This not a problem, but I need to know if new ClientID’s will be created for the copied over Sales Ledger accounts as I will need to reset a table on our system that the API uses to link the members database to QuickFile.
The client IDs may be different as new ones will be assigned when the new accounts are created but the Account numbers will be the same as they are copied over.
Given all the above, is there any way at all that all this could be avoided - by that I mean, are Quickfile able to change our ledger type to Charity Limited and keep our existing systems intact.
Unfortunately you can not change the company type once an account is set up.
