Transaction Migration Primer
Read me first before you migrate or import any transactions to your new system.
Transaction migration - What you must know
Our method for migrating data is tried, tested, and safe.
Before migrating transactions from another system to Salesorder, you must decide how the transaction and its data will be used, and why you are moving it.
There are two types of transactions, those you are done with and those you aren't.
Historical - they're completed; fulfilled, paid, etc. You're not going back and changing them, ever!
Open - they're unfinished business; they're not fulfilled, they're not paid, or they're partially completed. You still need to finish the job!
Let's talk about history...
History is useful for reference and forecasting
There are two good reasons why you might want your historical data in your new system.
Customer or Supplier reference: In both cases, it's useful to be able to refer back to transactions to answer questions about what happened and when. For example, who bought what, or what did you buy from whom? Or how much did they pay, or what did you pay?
Supply and demand forecasting: Inventory forecasting is critical to making sure you have the right products and their respective quantities at the right time. Buying enough stock to fulfill every order on time, or not holding stock you can't sell is good practice. You know this. You want to make the best use of your working capital right?
These reasons mean you can minimize the amount of data you need to move from your old system to your Salesorder system. See
History is history, you shouldn't be able to change it
So it follows, that you'd never want to change your trading history right?
Your trading history comprises non-posting and posting transactions. When you move your trading history from one system to another, the new home of the data should not offer any opportunity whatsoever to alter the historical data. Why would you possibly want to?
History is imported into Salesorder as read-only
When you import all non-posting and posting Historical transactions from your old system to Salesorder we designed our solution to enable you to import in ALL transactions and make them read-only.
This is done by marking the Status of every transaction you are about to import as Historical. I'll explain how in a moment.
All (and I mean ALL) posting transactions should MUST be imported with a Status of Historical. Keep reading and all will become clear.
Let's talk about Open transactions.
Open non-posting transactions can be imported as Open or Pending
Incomplete Sales and Purchase Orders are Open. Before you import these transactions into your Salesorder system you can mark these with a Status of 'Open'. I'll explain how in a moment.
You can also mark the Status of Sales Orders you're about to import as Pending. We built a Pending status into Sales Orders to give you a 'turnstile' for orders incoming from sales channels like Shopping Carts, the TAP, etc. Pending orders need approval before they become Open and continue their journey.
Your Salesorder system includes an Approval function. See 'Roles'.
Separating Open posting transactions and their balances
Your Profit and Loss, and Balance Sheet accounts all have balances. These balances are continually adjusted by new transactions. Transactions such as Sales and Purchase Invoices have balances that alter the balance of the Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable General Ledger accounts.
When you move your accounting from your old system to Salesorder, your old General Ledger accounts will have 'Ending balances'. Your new General Ledger will have 'Opening Balances'.
Your Opening Balances are made up of balances from one or more Open transactions. For example, the current Accounts Receivable balance may have resulted from multiple unpaid Sales Invoices from multiple Customers.
These Invoices all have balances made up of individual Line Item balances. These are SKUs that were sold and purchased, there are also some others, such as shipping charges, credits, etc.
When you're importing posting transactions to Salesorder, there are two options:
Importing Open posting transactions
For an Open posting transaction, e.g. Sales Invoice, you transfer the transaction with the Status set to Historical. This transaction and its balances are not written to the General Ledger.
This transfer is done using the Upload Transactions import template.
The outstanding balance of the transaction is posted (Debited) to the Nominal Account, in this example, Accounts Receivable for the respective Customer.
This transfer is done by a General Journal.
You can upload Journal entries in bulk using the Upload Journals import template.
If the Customer has more than one outstanding Invoice, you'll transfer the aggregated balances. See General Journal for how to post entries by Customer (or Supplier).
The outcome is you have:
A historical (read-only) copy of the Sales Invoice in your new Salesorder system.
The Customer's outstanding balance in Accounts receivable in your new Salesorder system.
What do I do with the 'Credit' side of the Journal Transaction? See Launch Sequence T3 for enlightenment.
Importing Completed posting transactions
For a Complete posting transaction, e.g. Sales Invoice, you transfer the transaction with the Status set to Historical. This transaction and its balances are not written to the General Ledger.
This transfer is done using the Upload Transactions import template.
The outcome is you have:
A historical (read-only) copy of the Sales Invoice in your new Salesorder system.
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