Migrate from BigChange to Pipedrive

Jobs do not map 1:1 to Pipedrive Deals — the object model translation is the central complexity

BigChange Jobs are the primary operational record — each Job carries site details, multi-technician assignments, SOR pricing, financial documents, and status history. Pipedrive Deals are commercial records linked to Persons and Organizations. There is no native Job object in Pipedrive, so every BigChange Job must be translated into one Pipedrive Deal with job-specific fields stored in custom fields, and all associated activities linked to that Deal. The job_type, site_address, SOR summary, and job-specific notes must be captured as Pipedrive custom fields on the Deal record. This translation step is the most time-consuming part of the mapping phase and directly affects the field-mapping row count and validation work.

Schedule of Rates pricing has no native Pipedrive equivalent — rate-card detail requires a custom approach

BigChange Schedule of Rates defines agreed pricing per job type and is used to generate Quotes and Invoices. Pipedrive has no native rate-card or SOR object — pricing is modelled as Deal Amount, optional Products with prices, or custom fields. We map SOR line items to Pipedrive Products linked to the Deal, and the total SOR value to Deal Amount. However, the granular per-task-rate structure that BigChange stores must be flattened or stored as a custom text field since Pipedrive Products use per-unit pricing rather than a rate-card model. Teams with complex multi-tier SORs should expect manual review of the rate translation during the sample migration phase.

BigChange multi-site organizations need a pre-migration decision on Organization structure in Pipedrive

A BigChange Organization can have multiple Sites — each Site with its own address, contact, and asset records. Pipedrive Organizations do not have a native Site sub-object. During migration, teams must choose: (a) one Pipedrive Organization record per BigChange Organization, with Site details stored in a custom field, or (b) one Pipedrive Organization per Site, creating a many-to-one structure. Option (b) affects how Deal-to-Organization relationships work and how revenue reports aggregate. This decision must be made before data loads because it determines how org_id foreign keys resolve on the Job-to-Deal migration step. We surface this decision in the discovery phase and document it in the migration plan.

Pipedrive's daily POST/PUT rate limits require staged migration batches — large data volumes take longer

Pipedrive enforces a 10,000 POST/PUT daily limit per user token across all plan tiers, plus burst limits of 20–120 requests per 2-second rolling window depending on the plan (Lite through Ultimate). BigChange exports with 10,000+ persons, organizations, and jobs can exceed this limit in a single-day migration run. We pace the migration in batches, monitoring x-ratelimit-remaining headers returned by the Pipedrive API and pausing between batches. For setups with more than 50,000 records, the migration clock time extends to 7–14 days because of rate-limit pacing, not data volume alone. This is disclosed upfront so teams do not expect an overnight migration for large datasets.

Financial documents (Invoices, Credit Notes) cannot be imported into Pipedrive natively — they require an alternative archival strategy

BigChange generates Invoice and Credit Note documents with line-item detail, payment status, and PDF attachments. Pipedrive has no invoice, credit-note, or financial-document object — these records have no destination equivalent in the standard data model. We migrate Invoice metadata (number, amount, date, status, linked Job/Organization) as a Pipedrive Activity note on the corresponding Deal, preserving the commercial record for reference. The actual PDF attachments are downloaded and re-uploaded as Pipedrive Files linked to the Activity. Payment history and aged receivable data must be reconciled separately in the accounting destination the team uses post-migration.