Nearly every day I receive phone calls enquiring about Saasu and migrations.

Change is a very scary proposition to most businesses, however many realise that there are better ways to do things especially with the ever expanding market of online businesses.

This is an even scarier proposition for those that desire to keep their history. This could be for many reasons. From tracking sales data, company historical or as for our biggest migration of en years of data to keep warranty details in one file.

My name is Jo Coleman and my girls and I have now done hundreds of data migrations. In house, we call ourselves the migration queens.

The second most common question we get is how much it is going to cost. This is like asking how long is a piece of string? The cost of each migration is totally dependent on several factors;

• The size of the file
• How much info the client wants
• The integrity of the file

Businesses come in all shapes and sizes. Migrations are just the same.

We have never had a business we could not migrate. We have moved businesses from ledger books, Excel, MYOB, QB, Arrow, Netsuite, Xero and Navision to name a few.

Our goal is to assist our clients in transitioning quickly and accurately to Saasu. It is about reducing the stress while we clean the mess.

Drawing on this experience we break migrations down into the following 5 key areas;

• Client knowledge
• Volume and integrity of data
• Reviewing and cleansing of data
• Moving of data and balancing
• Training and support

1.   Client Knowledge

BY listening to how a client works, what they need, what their aims are for the future, we will often refresh data and data processes to provide them with a better solution to what they currently have.

Clients do not move to have a replica of old history. By listening and working with the business we can often improve on the past.

Two system example of this is changing service invoicing to item based. Line and invoice tagging on historical data.

If we move you, we improve you. Once a business chooses to migrate we make sure nobody gets left behind.

2.   Volume and Integrity of Data

Some clients want openings only, others want monthly trial balances, more and more want history.

At present, we are in the process of moving 8 businesses to Saasu.

Three of these are clients who originally went with opening balances, started using Saasu, then came back and said they should have brought over their history as well, they asked us could we now do that as well, to which we answered yes of course!

We often find ingrained bad habits and errors that have been passed on from one staff member to another.

Even more often the business owner or manager, are not aware of those errors. Putting full faith in staff, that are trained by other staff.

The beauty of bringing in historical is that it also as a data cleansing process for the business giving them a new lease on life, and they put their faith in Saasu.

We have had many clients who have had to relodge BAS/IAS Super and even tax returns due to major errors in their files. For one client, by integrating his E-store, PayPal and tracking client addresses, this ended up in a $17k refund on GST.

The audit was a breeze as the information was all so visible and accessible.

3.   Reviewing and Cleansing

This is the biggest step and after collecting the info in steps one and two. I can’t tell you how many times even contact info migration has been riddled with errors. For example; Incorrect and incomplete email addresses, phone number fields with names in the field. It is much easier to clear all of this first, prior to move.

Many accounting systems export exclusive of GST. If you do not clean the data, you will have a myriad of invoices out by 1c.

I can’t stress enough the importance of this step. It makes all the difference.

4.   Moving and Balancing

This now becomes the easiest step. It all moves in and sync’s beautifully and with Saasu’s automated features, at his point is just verify and a tick.

5.   Training and Support

By using a clients own data its familiar it makes it much easier for a business to make a successful transition and much easier for staff to make the move with less resistance.

The familiarity with their own business data and the improvements really gives Saasu its chance to shine and often for the first time in a long time they are excited by their integral business again. I love this stage!

These steps are tried and tested and they work. However, there are also some instances of files that take the extra work and knowledge that won’t just import! These really require a data migration expert!

More examples of these are payroll – the API is not open so it cannot be imported. This relies on attention to detail and knowing your stuff.  The amount of incorrect payroll data I see is mindboggling. I would see errors in three out of four files.

Just quietly, I’m very excited about keypay, as I feel that this product will just bring so much more to the table.

Another is Journals. They are a perfect example of old accounting methodology. We can dramatically reduce the amount of journals by bringing then in as service invoices.

Many businesses have a large volume of Journals in their file, especially if they are coming from older systems, as this practice was common in the dark ages of accounting. Journals still have a place in the system, we just aim to use them correctly and not for dark age techniques of hiding the mess in as many lines as possible and it will go away.

Businesses want more information, better reportability to give them the edge in their individual markets. Migrating to Saasu enables businesses to do this.

This gives the client better reportability and allows them to use features like tagging and line tagging as of recently.