Glossary
What is Data migration?
Data migration is the process of moving existing records, such as items, customers, suppliers, stock levels and opening balances, from an old system, a spreadsheet or paper into new software, so history is not lost and nothing has to be retyped.
Data migration moves your business’s current position into new software: what you sell, who you sell to and buy from, what is on the shelves and who owes whom. It is rarely a transfer of every past bill, and a good migration does not try to be.
How it works in practice
A kirana distributor leaving Excel usually works in this order. Tidy the sheets so each holds one kind of record under a single header row. Import the master lists: units and categories first, then products, then customers, suppliers and bank accounts. Enter opening stock per location from a physical count, and opening balances for what each party owes from the old closing figures. Then raise the first few bills in both systems for a day, and compare VAT, invoice numbers, stock and dues before switching.
What stays behind is history. In Kuver Books, ledgers and past transactions are not importable, so old bills remain in the spreadsheet, the Tally installation or the bill book as your archive, and the new system starts a fresh invoice series.
Common mistakes
- Importing a messy file and planning to tidy it later. Duplicate customers and blank rates are cheaper to fix in the sheet.
- Loading products before their units or categories exist.
- Importing the same file again to fix a few rows, which creates duplicates rather than corrections.
- Entering the selling price as the opening stock rate instead of what the stock cost.
- Never reconciling. Compare opening stock and party balances with your old closing figures, and sign them off before the first sale.
When it is not worth it
Carrying years of transactions into a new system rarely repays the effort; keep the old records readable instead. A move squeezed into the week before a VAT filing, or into Dashain trade, invites mistakes. The cleanest time to switch is the start of the Bikram Sambat fiscal year at Asar end, though a mid-year start with dated opening balances works too.
The step-by-step routes, including which records import and how the reconciliation is checked, are in moving from Excel or a bill book and moving from Tally.
Glossary
Every billing and tax term, A to Z.
See how Kuver Books handles data migration.
A free trial with your own items imported, and a person on WhatsApp for the questions.
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