Almost every record in the product points at another one — an account points at a control, a job points at a party, an invoice points at a job. Import in dependency order and each file finds what it needs; import out of order and rows are rejected for pointing at codes that do not exist yet.
Exporting from your old system
Every screen here takes a plain CSV whose first row holds the column headings. Whatever your old system can produce — a report exported to Excel, a table dumped from its database — save it as UTF-8 CSV with one header row and one record per line.
- Keep the old captions as headings. The importer matches them onto this screen's fields automatically, so the closer they are to the old wording, the less mapping you do.
- Split anything over 5,000 data rows into several files.
- Export codes, not descriptions, wherever the old system has both.
- Dates are safest as YYYY-MM-DD.
The order to import in
| # | Load | Why first |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Group Codes → Control Codes → Chart of Accounts | Everything financial hangs off the chart. |
| 2 | Sector Codes → Country Codes → Destination Codes | Routing is a chain; each tier names the one above it. |
| 3 | The remaining code files — currencies, commodities, container types, charge codes, job types, airlines, shipping lines, vessels, signatories | The job and invoice screens pick from these. |
| 4 | Parties, Associate Codes, Sub-Agent Parties, SPO Codes | Counterparties, which the code files above may already reference. |
| 5 | Opening Balances | Needs every account to exist first. |
| 6 | Employees and their salary records, if you are using HR | Payroll reads them. |
| 7 | Live jobs, then the documents raised against them | A document names its job; the job has to be there. |
Heads up
Closed history is usually not worth migrating. Bring across your open jobs, your outstanding invoices and your balances; leave settled years in the old system and keep it readable for a while.
Checking the result
- Run the Trial Balance and compare it to the closing trial balance from the old system.
- Run Party-wise Outstanding and compare the total against your old aged debtors.
- Spot-check a handful of jobs against their paperwork.