It comes as no surprise, changing accounting software systems can lead to all sorts of issues. Expectedly, your financial business operations are halted and all paid systems are stopped. To avoid such inconveniences, a well-thought-out migration plan is a must. Which is what we will help you with today.
Migration is always a complex set of operations but we managed to cram all of it down to just 10 steps. When writing this guide, our goal was to make it as simple as we can, so let’s not waste any time and dive into the process itself.
Best Time to Swap Systems
Often, we get asked when should you move your data to a new system, and almost in 99% of cases the answer is to move your stuff at the tail end of the fiscal year. This is the time when most, if not all, financial operations are already completed and you have just enough time to use your transitional plan.
However, don’t go on running away as you also must create a functional backup way in advance. That’s right, no migration is good without a backup. If things go haywire, then the backup will serve as a restore point, a footprint of sorts. While you are at it, you might also want to take a closer look at the data itself. See whether it is in a good state, accessible, and free of errors. You might also find some duplicates and old records that have no relevance to your business.
As a reminder, all of the above is just prep work for your accounting system migration. In other words, we didn’t even start to discuss the plan but you must do everything we’ve mentioned in advance as it will determine the quality of the migration itself. Alright, now on to the plan itself.
1. Set a Definitive Cut-off Date
This might seem impossible but no, you absolutely must set a cut off date, otherwise, you’ll extend the accounting system migration over and over. Knowing when to stop using your current system will also allow you to finish all your financial operations much sooner. Also, you might want to do your bank reconciliation at the end so that you can start using your new solution as soon as the start of the next month.
2. Notify Your Staff
When planning an accounting data migration, it is vital to your business that you keep your accountants up-to-date. After all, they are the core user of the system and their input is essential. Your main accountant will help you select the right plan, as well as the right amount of features.
Your accounting staff will also be the ones that use the system, meaning that they will be the ones who will decide whether the system is comfortable or not. If the tool is complex and doesn’t meet your staff’s expectations, your work will slow down immensely.
3. Settle on Requirements First
Having a shortlist (or a long list) of requirements and “nice to have’ things will help you focus on features you need the most. If you don’t know exactly what you need, again, refer to your accountant. Sit together and pile-up a list. Once done, we also suggest that you make good use of free trials and demo presentations.
Another good thing to keep in mind when starting an accounting system migration is scalability. See what other tiers offer (even if you don’t have the budget to use them) and what reviewers might say. All of this will help you pick the best tool for your company.
4. Inspect Your IT Infrastructure
If you’ve used any modern accounting tool, you probably know that software is just part of it. You need to make sure that your hardware is also up to snuff. The last thing you want to find out that your brand new solution chugs your hardware. Some of you might be stating that cloud computing is done remotely with no strain on your hardware, and that would be correct.
However, the entire user interface, animations, local calculations, and data traversal operations are done on your hardware. The more complex the system is, the more it will push your systems. Carefully study your technical capabilities and in case of necessity, install better processors, add more RAM, you name it.
5. Back up your current data
We briefly mentioned in the introduction that it is best that you backup your stuff before doing anything. Well, we just want to reinstate this again, your current data is valuable and your data will help you grow, losing it is not an option. Make multiple backups of the same file and scatter them across different storages, so there will be no disaster recovery in the future.
6. Set on Quantifiable Goals
Also known as business performance metrics, quantifiable goals will help you keep things tidy across all phases, including implementation and post-launch support. This step is also responsible for setting up a data format that you’ll use later to achieve the posed objectives, so take your time with it.
7. Test Drive Before Buy
If the vendor offers a trial run, use it. If the vendor offers a free plan, register it. If the vendor doesn’t have either of those, ask for a demo. Don’t buy a cat in the bag, you have the right to know what you are spending your money on. And if you feel like it is the system for you, we suggest that you send a small portion of data to the system using our migration wizard. It will send a small chunk of your stuff to the target platform, free of charge, mind you, and see whether the tool processes the data correctly.
8. Formatting and Mapping Process
It doesn’t matter that the system you’ve picked does the same things. The way it was built is always different. Code, just like features, cannot be reused as it’ll be deemed as plagiarism and intellectual property theft. Your new system will process incoming records differently, or worse, not at all. To help avoid all these issues, you can either adapt the records yourself to the new system or again, refer to our migration wizard. Our tool knows exactly how to adapt them properly and will do it automatically.
As a word of advice, if you have a lot of records, it will take a lot of time to make them work on the new system. And if time is of the essence, then why not opt for our service. It is not only fast but will do everything for you. It comes at a reasonable fee, that is you pay only for the stuff you’ve moved, and you get support before, during, and after accounting data migration.
9. Test Transferred Data
This accounting system migration phase is crucial as not doing so, means that you aren’t exactly 100% sure that your records will be usable in the new system. We understand that checking everything manually can take forever but if one day you find out that you lack data on a certain client, you might lose customer trust, which is far worse than you think it might be. We suggest that you compare data structure, reports of both systems, and see if there are any discrepancies.
10. Train Your Employees
And the last part is to train your people to use the system. You can do this whenever you like but we suggest that this is done before the migration phase. You will have a lot of work on your hand as-is and tackling training sessions will surely put a strain on your human resources.
Final Notes
Accounting data migration is a process that will never be easy, especially when it comes to accounting systems. Accounting tools are getting more and more complex and the more data you have to deal with, the more time it will take you to move things. Having a plan will help you keep things tidy and timely. Yet, if you don’t have time, then you should use an automated accounting migration tool.
It will move your stuff accurately and will not cost you a fortune. To learn more about the system, we suggest that you give us a call or schedule a demo. But for now, thanks for joining and we hope to see you again.
