You've picked the new system. We get everything out of the old one and into it: exported, mapped, cleaned, deduplicated, checked by a person, and signed off by you before anyone flips the switch. One fixed price, agreed before we start.
Every switch hits the same wall. Most new providers hand you their import templates, tidy, empty spreadsheets, and the job of filling them from the old system lands on someone in your team. Evenings of exporting, retyping, and guessing which column means what.
And the old system holds years of it: customers, staff files, invoices, bookings, notes. Some of it's gold. Some of it's duplicates and dead records you've been carrying since 2019. Type it across as it stands and the mess moves in with you.
We do that work instead. You add us as a user on the old system and the new one, we get the data out, sort it, and load it. Nothing goes live until you've checked the numbers and said so.
Six of the most common. If yours isn't here, it almost certainly still fits, the method is the same.
Employment history, holiday balances, absence records, documents. People data has legal rules of its own, and we handle it that way from the first export.
Accounts, contact details, notes, open deals, the history your team actually leans on. Deduplicated on the way across, so the new system starts clean.
Sales, purchases, balances, and enough of the back catalogue that nobody's digging out the old laptop for an answer in two years' time.
Shift patterns, schedules and the hours behind payroll, mapped to however the new system thinks about time. The part teams most often give up on and retype.
Support plans, visit notes, medication records. Moved under a written data agreement, with the extra safeguards this kind of data legally needs.
No old system at all, just workbooks that grew into one. We turn them into clean records your first proper system can use.
The same shape every time, whatever the systems involved. You approve the mapping before anything moves, and you sign off before anything goes live.
You add us as a user on both systems, authorised in writing, read-only on the old one wherever it allows it. If exports are easier, send those instead.
We work out where every field lands in the new system and show you the mapping in plain English. You approve it before a single record moves.
Duplicates merged, formats fixed, dead records flagged for a decision instead of silently dropped. Our tools do the donkey work. A person checks every mapping.
Into the new system through its own import tools, in a test area first where one exists. Your live system is touched exactly as agreed and no further.
Record counts and spot checks against the old system, side by side. You sign off before the old system gets switched off, and you keep a full export.
The things that make people dread this job. We put them in writing so you can hold us to them.
One fixed price, quoted from a sample of your data. The number you agree is the number you pay.
If the data turns out messier than the sample suggested, that's ours to absorb. The price holds.
You authorise exactly what we can log into, in writing. Read-only where possible, and removed the day the job ends.
The old system stays on until you've signed off the new one, and you keep a full export of everything either way.
The quote, the mapping and the sign-off all arrive in plain English, readable by someone who doesn't do this for a living.
Fields like sickness records get the strictest handling we have, in our own code, under the written agreement. No exceptions for deadline pressure.
Before we see a single record, we sign a data processing agreement, the contract UK GDPR requires when someone works on your data. Every account we use runs multi-factor authentication, everything we hold for the job is encrypted, and at the end it's deleted or handed back, your call.
Every tool in the chain runs under terms that stop your data being used for anything except your job, and the most sensitive fields are only ever handled by our own code. You get a written record of what was accessed, when, and why.
Sometimes, up to a point. Vendor teams work to their standard templates and current data, so the cleaning, the deep history and the odd formats usually stay your job. Take everything they include, then hand us what's left. We're glad to work alongside their team.
If it can run a report or export a file, the data can come out, and nearly everything can. The awkward ones just take longer to map, and the quote says so up front rather than surprising you later.
That's the right question to ask. Access is authorised by you in writing, read-only where the system allows it, protected by multi-factor authentication, and removed the day the job ends. You'll have a record of exactly what we accessed and when.
We act as your processor, meaning a written agreement governs what we can do with the data, and it's the first thing we sign. Sensitive fields get special handling, records are kept, and when the job's done your data leaves our systems.
It depends on the state of the data, which is why we ask for a sample before quoting. The quote comes back within 2 working days with a fixed price and a timeline, and the timeline is part of the deal.
Some won't, honestly. Every system has fields the other doesn't. Anything that can't land cleanly gets listed with our suggestion for each, and you decide. Nothing gets silently dropped.
A slice of your data, anonymised if you prefer, is enough for a fixed quote within 2 working days. Or start with a call and we'll tell you straight whether the job even needs us.