Accounting Data Migration Checklist

Accounting data migration can be complex, especially when faced with a large volume of data. It’s a formidable task that can present numerous challenges. Whether upgrading your existing accounting system or switching to a new one, a well-prepared data migration plan is essential.

Here, you can find in-depth data migration checklists for the supported accounting platforms.

Plus, to help you out, we’ve prepared this guide with the general tips and the peculiarities of our service so that your data migration runs as smoothly and painlessly as possible.

First steps before your accounting migration

As soon as you’ve chosen a new accounting system, first of all, do the following things:

• Check if there are any discrepancies between your old accounting system and your tax return;
• Choose the examples of all data for the test transfer to avoid hiccups during the full data migration;
• Select the proper date for your data migration so that you have enough time to prepare and warn your employees;
• Define the cut-off data when you stop using your old accounting system. You need to compare data after the import. Mostly, companies choose the end of the month, the quarter, or the year;
• Choose the quantifiable goals. They will help you to plan, perform, and to control the data migration;
• Train your employees how to use a new accounting system so that they can start working with it immediately after the migration process.

Working with your source system

• Make sure you have your current data in a secure backup file. In case any problems appear during the migration process, you can recover your data from your backup easily;
• Study sources of data. You need to know where is it, what format is it, and how you will access it after the migration;
• Clean up your data from bad, inaccurate and useless records. Fix inaccuracies in your books, irrelevant information, and wrong transaction coding;
• Check if your target system supports the same formatting requirements as your source one;
• Decide what data you would like to import first;
• Choose if you want to move all your historical data or opening balances;
• Delete the old data that you won’t need on your new accounting system. This will speed up your migration process.

What to do before the migration

Before you run the accounting migration, check out the following steps to ensure that the transfer goes smoothly:

• Ensure that you have access credentials to the source systems. Migration Wizard doesn’t access your data without this information;
• Check whether you’ve created the target system. You need the space where to transfer your data;
• Select the same currencies on both source and target systems. Bills don’t transfer correctly if the currencies are different.

Note: No matter if you have an empty target account or full of data, it doesn’t influence your migration.

Merging Source and Target data

• Such records Accounts, Contacts, and Vendors (Users) don’t duplicate during the migration process. When Migration Wizard moves your data from the source system, it looks for such entities on your target platform. If such records exist on your target system, our tool connects your source data to them;
• After the migration, Bills, Invoices, and Transfers from your source system don’t match with the same records on your target system. You can’t match these entities because they obtain different information. That’s why there aren’t specific criteria to match them;
• Some accounting systems don’t support negative numbers so you can’t transfer Bills and Taxes with the negative value;
• The number of Taxes can differ on both the source and target platforms. That’s because some systems round up the price value in Bills and Taxes while others round them down.

Note: If you provide the specific criteria for Bills, Invoices, and Transfers, our support agents can help you with the customized transfer of these records. API platform functionality also must allow this process.

What to do after the Accounting Data Migration

Before you migrate fully to a new accounting system, don’t forget to do the following things:

• Test imported data to check if the new accounting system works well. Compare the reports from the old accounting system with the new ones to check if they match;
• Run both source and target systems simultaneously to compare them. In such a way, you will know what to incorporate into a new platform from the old one. The period of time depends on the size of your company and the complexity of the target system. Besides, you give your workers time to adjust;
• Close off your source system after you’ve completed your invoicing and bank reconciliations.

Note: Import your data into posting journals rather than tables to avoid errant information.

Let’s run your migration

That’s it. Now you can run your accounting migration successfully. Before you proceed with the process, make sure that you read everything attentively once again.

If you still have any questions related to accounting data transfer, feel free to contact us in advance. Our support agents will do their best to assist you with the migration.