How to move 14 years of Total Office Manager history

What was moved

The contractor had run its whole business in TOM for fourteen years: service calls, estimates, invoices, payments, purchasing, inventory and the books. Everything came across.

14 years

of books reconciled to TOM's own reports

40,000

invoices, each with the payments that paid it

90,000

work orders, brought across as visits

39,600

estimates, won, lost or open

Along with those came about 31,000 pieces of customer equipment, every active customer with each work site as an address, and the vendors, items and employees behind them.

Start with a database backup, not exports

The single most useful thing you can ask for is a full backup of your TOM database, usually a .bak file. It holds operations, accounting, payroll and inventory together. Spreadsheets and report exports each show one slice and lose the links between records: which payment paid which invoice, which estimate became which job.

Your Aptora contact can usually supply the backup. You'll need two: an early copy for a rehearsal, and a final copy at cutover. If you also want the documents and photos kept on Aptora's file server, ask for a copy of those before your Aptora agreement ends.

Decide how many years you need

You don't have to bring everything. Years you leave behind aren't lost from your books: their totals arrive as an opening balance, so your balances still agree with TOM. What you choose is how much detail you can look up in the new system.

• None (opening balances). You start fresh with every balance and open item, and keep TOM read-only for look-ups.
• One year. This year's and last year's reporting, tax filings and recent callbacks.
• Five years. Enough for warranties, maintenance customers and how old customers' equipment is.
• Ten years or all of them. Each customer's full lifetime: every job, estimate and invoice. This is what the 14-year contractor chose.

The more history you bring, the more there is to find: lapsed maintenance customers, estimates never followed up, equipment due for replacement and work never invoiced.

What moves, and what doesn't

What moves

• Customers, sites, contacts, vendors, items, employees and customer equipment
• Every invoice, credit memo, payment, bill, check, deposit and journal entry in your window, with year-end closings
• Payments linked to the invoices they paid, so balances and aging are right on day one
• Work orders as visits, and estimates linked to the jobs and invoices they became
• Open work orders, open estimates, open purchase orders and uncleared bank items at cutover

What doesn't

• Voided documents
• Card numbers, stored card profiles and card-processor settings
• Audit trails, GPS history, email and caller-ID logs
• Ledger detail before your window, which arrives as the opening balance

Rehearse first, then cut over

A migration you can only run once is a migration you can't check. The safer pattern is two runs.

1. Rehearsal. A full run on an early copy of TOM. You review the result in your own new system: customers, open invoices, balances, a few old jobs you know well. You sign it off.
2. Cutover. A final copy of TOM, usually taken on a Friday. The run brings only what changed since the rehearsal copy, up to about two weeks of new transactions, and you start on the new system on Monday.

You keep working in TOM right up to cutover. Nothing about your day changes until the switch.

How you know the numbers are right

"Migrated" should mean the numbers agree, not just that the records arrived. Balances are checked against TOM's own balance reports, account by account and customer by customer, for every year in the window.

Long-running systems collect small inconsistencies over the years: a payment applied in an odd way, a rounding difference, a document edited after it was posted. Those aren't hidden or forced to balance. Each one is listed with its amount in a register that you review and sign off before go-live.

On the 14-year migration, all fourteen years of the books were reconciled to TOM's own reports.

How long it takes

From receiving your TOM copy to being ready for cutover: about two weeks for opening balances only, and four to six weeks when you bring history. Most of the time goes to your reviews, so the schedule depends mainly on how quickly the coverage review and the rehearsal are signed off.

What to prepare

• The TOM backup, early and final, from your Aptora contact
• A copy of Aptora's file server, if you want the older documents and photos
• Your cutover date, warranty terms, warehouses and bins
• Whether payroll will run in the new system, and your staff with their roles
• Someone in your office with an afternoon to review the rehearsal

Aptora and Total Office Manager (TOM) are trademarks of their owner, used here only to identify the system your data comes from. LogsNX is not affiliated with Aptora.