Moving from spreadsheets to an ERP
A practical order of operations for leaving spreadsheets: what to move first, what to leave behind, and how to pick the cutover date.
Most failed migrations fail the same way: everything is moved at once, in the middle of a month, without cleaning anything first. The work below is ordered so that each step is useful even if you stop after it.
Clean before you move
Do this in the spreadsheet, where it is easy. Deduplicate customers and suppliers, so the same company is not three contacts with three spellings. Settle on one product code per item. Delete items you no longer sell rather than carrying them across. A migration is the cheapest opportunity you will ever get to throw things away.
Move the standing data first
Contacts, then the catalog, then warehouses. This data changes slowly, so moving it early costs nothing if the cutover slips, and it lets people see the new system before it matters.
Pick a cutover at a period boundary
The first day of a month, and ideally the first day of a quarter or year. Opening balances and stock counts are meaningful at a boundary and painful in the middle of one.
Count the stock on the day
Not the week before. Enter the counted quantities as your opening stock, and accept that the count is now the truth even where it disagrees with the old file. Carrying a known-wrong figure into a new system only moves the problem.
Enter opening balances with your accountant
Trial balance, outstanding customer invoices, and unpaid supplier bills. This is the step to do with whoever files your accounts, not alone at night.
Run parallel briefly, then stop
Two weeks of keeping both is a sensible check. Longer than that and you have two systems and no single truth, which is worse than either. Set the end date before you start.
About Ameen specifically
There is no self-serve import wizard today. Contacts, catalog, and opening balances are entered, and if you have a large amount of standing data that is a real cost you should raise with us when you request access rather than discover afterwards.
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