A new system with old, messy data gives you the same problems faster. Cleaning before migration is the cheapest moment to do it, because every record passes through someone’s hands anyway.
Customers and suppliers
- Merge duplicates: the same customer under three spellings is three credit limits and three statements
- Confirm tax numbers, phone numbers and email addresses
- Close accounts that have not traded in two years instead of migrating them
Items
- One item code per product, with a clear naming rule
- Correct units of measure and conversion factors, for example carton to piece
- Remove items you no longer sell
- Set item groups so reports by category work from day one
Balances
Migrate balances, not history. Bring in opening balances at the cut-over date and the open documents behind them: unpaid invoices, unpaid bills and open orders. Keep the old system read-only for history.
Stock
Count before you migrate. Load quantities from the count, with values agreed by finance. If you track batches or serial numbers, record them during the count.
How to check the result
- Trial balance in the new system equals the old one at cut-over
- Debtors and creditors ageing match, customer by customer
- Stock quantity and value match the count, warehouse by warehouse
- A sample of twenty records is checked by the people who use them every day