We would like to give you opinion on data conversion and how it is typically done. In our example we assume that you have your accounting records in old version of Great Plains DOS 9.5.
However if your legacy application is different for example QuickBooks even then migration project has similar steps. There are questions which we would like to discuss prior to beginning exporting invoices and sales orders from your legacy application. First question is about conversion scope:
1. ‘Let’s convert everything’ might look like legitimate suggestion. However it is as easy as it might sound especially it might require huge number of consulting hours. This is one of the popular reasons that implementation fails due to over budgeting. Consulting firms typically recommend test migration to compare important reports from both system and then do final one. We recommend you categorize your legacy documents and decide what is important in the new system and what could be queried in the old. Records could be categorized as master records. Those are cards such as GL accounts, customers and vendors, addresses and inventory items to give you few examples. Cards have to be either migrated or manually keyed in before you can begin using the system
2. Open and Historical documents. Open invoices is where you expect customer payments to arrive and be applied against them. The same from the purchasing side. Chances are high that the number of these documents is reasonably low and they could be manually entered
3. Historical Documents. Here you need to think about feasibility for these past records to be in the new system. Over the last ten or more years in business you might have millions of AR invoices and sales orders. The magnitude of such work might be too high. At the same time we believe that you can simply have your old server run for data lookup only. If somebody who was your old customer calls it is easy enough to login old accounting and answer the questions
4. Exporting documents from legacy accounting. Typically you should consider two technologies. First one works in the case of Great Plains Accounting DOS. It is ODBC connection or connection directly in Pervasive SQL 2000 Control Center (via ODBC). Table names are self-explanatory but you will need DDF files (Data Definition File). In the case of GPA it is on Btrieve database platform. Customers, Items and Vendors are easy for exporting and cleansing. However in the case of Sales Orders it is more difficult as the same Btrieve file might host relative document types and transaction lines. Think about alternative method which in our consulting practice we use when exporting data from QuickBooks. It is where you are printing reports into text files and then do data cleansing in Excel
5. Importing into SAP B1. Here we recommend do it in Data Transfer Workbench as it is free of charge for new customers and consultants know how to fill up CSV template files. This work could be done again in Excel. Try to set your expectations that migration should be redone several times until you are satisfied with the quality of data
6. Second Opinion. If you migration project was screwed up feel free to call us for second opinion
7. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, Atlanta Georgia, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). We are working on Brazilian ERP consulting market in Sao Paulo since 2004
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