Payroll Data Migration
Your payroll system is being retired. Your seven-year record-keeping obligation isn't.
A wave of legacy New Zealand payroll systems is reaching end of life. If you’re running MYOB IMS, EXO, MYOB Payroll or ACE, you already know a move is coming – and the deadline isn’t yours to set.
Most of the noise is about choosing a new system. But the bigger risk is the one almost nobody mentions: what happens to your old data when the lights go out.
We move you off your dying system - safely, and with your history intact.
The hidden risk in every payroll migration
When a payroll system is decommissioned, it doesn’t politely hand your data over. Typically it goes read-only, or it stops working altogether. You can no longer process pays – and in many cases you can no longer easily report, search or extract the history sitting inside it.
That’s a problem, because in New Zealand your legal obligations don’t retire when your software does.
You must keep at least seven years of records - in a usable form
Inland Revenue requires employers to keep all employment and wage records for at least seven years. Wage, time and leave records also sit under the Employment Relations Act 2000 and the Holidays Act 2003. Between them, you’re expected to be able to produce – on request – an accurate seven-year history of:
- gross earnings, deductions, PAYE, KiwiSaver and student loan
- hours worked and leave taken
- holiday and leave accruals and balances
- tax codes, IR330 declarations and payment records
And “keep” means usable, not merely “stored somewhere.” If a Labour Inspector, Inland Revenue, an employee, or an employment claim asks for those records, “they’re locked inside a system we don’t run anymore” is not an answer that protects you. Read-only access in a dead platform is fragile, and it disappears entirely once the licence lapses.
The records have to come out of the old system, in a usable format, before it goes dark. That is the part of migration that gets overlooked – and it’s the part we make sure is done properly.
The deadlines you're working to
The legacy MYOB payroll products are retiring across 2026 and 2027. The exact date depends on which one you run:
- MYOB Payroll (NZ desktop) – support ends 31 March 2027
- MYOB EXO Payroll – they keep changing the end of life, but it is coming.
- MYOB IMS Payroll – reaching end of life.
- ACE Payroll – ceases March 2027
Migrations take time to do well – the worst outcome is an emergency cut-over in your final weeks. The earlier you start, the more carefully your history can be preserved and checked.
How we migrate you - and protect your history
We handle the whole move, end to end, so you don’t have to become a migration expert overnight.
1. Extract
We use our data migration tool to pull every employee, every pay history, and every leave balance out of your old system - completely.
2. Preserve
We make sure your full seven-plus-year record history is captured and held in an accessible, usable format - so you can always meet a records request, long after the old system is gone.
3. Validate
We check the migrated data against the source, so nothing is dropped, rounded or misread on the way across.
4. Parallel test run (optional)
We run your payroll in parallel so you can see, before you commit, that everything calculates correctly.
5. Cut over
In most cases you run your last pay in the old system, send us a backup, and we take over from the next pay. Done for you.
We also train your team on our easy-to-use client portal, so day-to-day payroll is simpler than it was before.
Migration is also when errors surface
Pulling years of data out of a legacy system has a way of exposing historical calculation errors – particularly under the Holidays Act. If we find them, we’ll tell you, and we can quantify and fix them as part of the move rather than letting them follow you into your new system. That’s payroll remediation, and doing it at migration is the cleanest possible time.
For more on why your compliance history matters when you switch, see Switching Payroll Systems? Don’t Leave Your Compliance History Behind
Why The Paymasters
A proven, done-for-you migration path
with a dedicated data migration tool and optional parallel test runs.
NZPPA-certified specialists
with more than 30 years of New Zealand payroll experience – so your data is handled by people who understand what every field actually means.
Your history, protected
we treat the seven-year record obligation as part of the job, not an afterthought.
Transparent, per-payslip pricing
and a real person to call – no call-centre run-around.
Privacy Act 2020 compliance
secure servers and audited penetration testing throughout.
You can also move from a dying system straight onto our fully managed payroll service – so the migration becomes the last payroll headache you have to think about.