Migrate from CentralStationCRM to Zoho CRM

CentralStationCRM People map to Zoho CRM Contacts. Name, email, phone, website, and custom fields migrate directly. The primary challenge is resolving the Company relationship: if the source People record is linked to a CentralStationCRM Company, we create the Zoho Account first, then populate the Account Name lookup on Contact during insert. We use email as the dedupe key to prevent duplicate Contact creation on re-migration runs.

CentralStationCRM Companies map to Zoho Accounts. We create Accounts before Contact import so that AccountId can be resolved at Contact insert time. The Company name becomes the Account Name field; website and phone migrate to their Zoho equivalents. If multiple CentralStationCRM People share the same Company, they all link to the single Account record.

CentralStationCRM Leads (pre-contact prospects distinct from Deals) map directly to Zoho CRM Leads. Lead status, source, and score fields migrate to Zoho Lead fields. Note that Zoho has a separate Convert action that creates both Account and Contact from a Lead; we preserve the original CentralStationCRM Lead ID in a custom field cs_lead_id__c for audit trail.

CentralStationCRM Deals map to Zoho Potentials. The Deal stage maps to a Zoho Potential Stage value, and the pipeline maps to a Zoho Sales Process that we configure before migration. Deal value migrates to Potential Amount. We create the parent Account or Contact link before inserting the Potential so that the WhatId reference is satisfied at insert time.

Each CentralStationCRM deal pipeline and its stages map to a Zoho Sales Process with corresponding Stage Name values. We configure the stage mapping during migration scoping, with the stage probability percentages translated to Zoho's Probability (%) field per stage. If CentralStationCRM uses multiple pipelines, we create multiple Sales Processes in Zoho, one per pipeline.

CentralStationCRM Activities attached to People or Companies export via nested routes (e.g., GET /api/people/{id}/activities.json). Call and generic activities map to Zoho Tasks with Task Type set to Call or Other; meetings map to Zoho Events with Start DateTime and End DateTime preserved. Activity timestamp migrates as Activity Date so that the timeline ordering is preserved in Zoho.

CentralStationCRM addresses live as 1-n children of People via nested routes. We traverse each /api/people/{id}/addrs.json route during export and map street, city, state, postal code, and country to Zoho's Mailing Address and Other Address fields on Contact, or the Billing/Shipping Address fields on Account. If a Person has multiple addresses, we attach the primary to the Contact record and flag additional addresses for the customer admin to assign.

CentralStationCRM tags are flat key-value labels applied to People, Companies, Deals, and Offers. We export all tag assignments per record and apply the same tags at Zoho CRM. Zoho's Tag field is a multi-select picklist or comma-separated tag field depending on the Zoho edition. Tags are preserved as-is without transformation; we recommend reviewing the tag vocabulary during scoping to collapse near-duplicates.

CentralStationCRM Offers (standalone quote-like objects linked to People or Companies with line items and totals) map to Zoho CRM Quotes. We map offer line items to Quote Item rows, with product name, quantity, unit price, and total preserved. Quote status (Draft, Sent, Accepted, Declined) migrates as Quote Stage.

CentralStationCRM tenant-defined custom fields have no fixed schema across accounts. We discover all custom fields at scoping by querying the source API's field definitions, then pre-create the matching Zoho CRM custom fields (with appropriate types: text, number, date, picklist, checkbox, etc.) in the destination modules before any data inserts. Custom fields are not available in Zoho CRM Free edition; we flag this constraint and recommend a Standard tier or above during scoping.

CentralStationCRM Tasks attached to People or Deals migrate to Zoho Tasks. Task title, due date, description, and completion status migrate. Completed status in CentralStationCRM maps to Zoho Status = Completed; open tasks map to Not Started or In Progress. Owner assignment resolves by matching the CentralStationCRM owner email to a Zoho CRM User record.

CentralStationCRM Owner references on People, Companies, Deals, and Activities map to Zoho CRM Users. We resolve owners by email match. Any CentralStationCRM Owner without a matching Zoho User goes to a reconciliation queue for the customer admin to provision before record import resumes. We require an admin-level Zoho account for the migration user to ensure access to all record types including closed Deals and archived Leads.