Migrating your data to MYOB Advanced: How does it work?

This post explains what’s involved in migrating your data from your existing accounting system to MYOB Advanced, in order to fully benefit from the superior visibility and productivity the ERP makes possible.

If you need a more specialised system that encompasses your whole business and not just your accounting function, MYOB’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is ideal.

When do business leaders typically commit to MYOB Advanced? When their business has outgrown desktop or cloud accounting software; they aren’t happy with their current ERP; or they want to consolidate and modernise a mishmash of paper records, spreadsheets, and standalone applications.

It’s a wise move for many reasons: improved multi-entity accounting and consolidated reporting, improved stock control and inventory ROI, better marketing and engaged customers, clarity on project progress and costs, and analytics that make decision-making simpler.  

However, changing your accounting or ERP system takes effort. Done poorly, it puts your valuable business and finance data at risk.

A well-planned and managed data migration to MYOB Advanced ensures that you carry over the information your team depends on and get up and running again faster.

How does Leverage Technologies help customers to migrate data to MYOB Advanced?

Leverage Technologies’ approach to working with customers migrating to MYOB Advanced involves three key stages:

1. Data migration assessment:

• Training your team in how to relate the data in their current system to the MYOB Advanced system.
• An assessment of what current data needs to be imported into MYOB Advanced.
• A gap analysis to determine whether current data is complete or whether additional data may be required to enable your desired use of MYOB Advanced’s functionality.

2. Cleaning and transformation of data.

3. Upload and validation.

Our approach is designed to ensure minimal disruption and maximum usability of the new system.

[WHITE PAPER – Should you transition from MYOB AccountRight to MYOB Advanced?]

What data can be migrated and how does it need to be prepared?

Generally speaking, if you can extract data into a spreadsheet then it can be imported into MYOB Advanced. It’s a straightforward process to bring across master data and opening balances, and there are pre-defined templates available as well.

Can you import your history?

All kinds of data, including history, can be migrated. With many other systems, the technical challenges associated with migrating historical data make it more trouble than it’s worth because the time and cost involved are too great.

MYOB Advanced makes it easier to bring your history over so that you can see information like invoices, sales, and accounts payable information going years back without impacting your GL or inventory levels.

However, including history does significantly increase the volume of data you need to import so it pays to think carefully about how far back you need to go and what data could potentially be stored in other ways to meet compliance or auditing concerns.

Why is the gap analysis needed?

New systems generally mean new functionality and new processes—after all, you’re changing systems to support changes to how you function and perform. The gap analysis that Leverage Technologies conducts helps identify data that might need to be created or collected to ensure your new ERP fulfils your requirements in the future.

For example, you may be keen to leverage the customer relationship management (CRM) tools within MYOB Advanced, but you don’t have complete email contact details for all of your customers. We assist you to determine what data may be missing across all business areas that will be essential for you to benefit from your digital transformation.

The gap analysis looks at what types of data are required; the volume of data; the sources of different data; and how much effort will be required to cleanse and transform the data.

How is data cleaned?

The second stage of the data migration in ERP is cleaning, reconciling and preparing data. Most of this work falls upon your business because your team members are the custodians of the data and know it best.

Cleaning and transforming data can involve:

• Reviewing data for accuracy and completeness
• Deleting or replacing data that are no longer relevant
• Manipulating and reconciling data
• Changing the format of data for consistency
• Mapping data to ensure it matches the fields/functions in MYOB Advanced.

Preparing your data tends to be the most time-consuming step so it’s important to dedicate the right level of resources—staff with the knowledge, skill, and authority to complete tasks in a timely fashion.

How much time and money is involved in migrating data to MYOB Advanced?

We make data migration in ERP as easy as possible. It can be done in a matter of weeks or months, depending on the extent of data preparation work.

Leverage Technologies initially meets with your team in person to discuss and assess your business’ migration needs. As part of that scoping exercise, we gain a better understanding of the time involved and can provide a reliable estimate of the project cost.

Master data migration happens early in the process, while data such as open invoices, sales orders, and GL balances are brought over just before go-live. We usually work with our customers via a mix of on-site and remote engagement, but we’ll almost always be on-site when the final upload is completed to provide troubleshooting.

Once the migration has occurred, we’ll provide you with reports that you can use to validate against reports from your old system. Your team will also need to spend a few days testing out your new MYOB Advanced solution to ensure any oversights can be corrected.

Migrating your data is simplified by working with a trustworthy partner like Leverage Technologies—our process is tried and true, our technical competence is second to none, and our consultants are helpful and communicative.  

Confidently migrate your business to MYOB Advanced by working with Leverage Technologies. Call 1300 045 046 or email info@leveragetech.com.au.