Migrate from Metis CRM to Pipedrive

Metis Client records map to Pipedrive Organization. The Client name becomes Organization name, primary contact email becomes the primary email on the Organization's linked Person. Client phone, address, and custom fields migrate as Organization custom fields. We use Client name as the dedupe key during import to prevent duplicate Organizations. Organizations must be created before any linked People or Deals to satisfy Pipedrive's lookup relationships.

Metis People records map to Pipedrive Person. Name, email, phone, role, and contact details migrate directly. The Person is linked to the parent Organization via the Organization ID resolved from the Client mapping. If a Person record in Metis has no associated Client, we create the Person as an unlinked record and flag it for the customer to either merge with an existing Organization or create a placeholder Organization manually.

Metis Opportunity records map to Pipedrive Deal. Opportunity name becomes Deal title, stage maps to a Pipedrive Pipeline stage, and value maps to Deal value. The linked Client becomes the Deal's Organization via the lookup resolved from the Client-to-Organization mapping. We create the Pipeline and stages in Pipedrive before migration using Metis's pipeline and stage names as the initial configuration. Note that Pipedrive deals do not have a native 'expected close date' sourced from a separate field — we map Metis's close date field to Deal close_date.

Metis Jobs represent project records with client association, status, dates, and job costing fields. The mapping decision depends on the customer's data: if job-costing fields (budget, cost, margin, billable hours) are few, we map Jobs to Pipedrive Deals with a custom 'project_type' picklist and job-costing fields as custom Deal fields. If job-costing data is complex, we create a Pipedrive custom object named 'Job' with custom fields matching the source schema, linked to the Organization via a lookup relationship. We make this decision during scoping based on the customer's Job field inventory. Jobs must be created after Organizations to satisfy the lookup.

Metis Timesheet entries map to Pipedrive Activity records (Task with activity_type = Task for general time entries, Event for scheduled time blocks). The linked Person from Metis resolves to the Pipedrive Person by email match and becomes the Activity's Person link. If the timesheet entry has a linked Job, we resolve the Job to either a Deal or custom Job object depending on the mapping strategy above and attach the Activity to it. Billable vs non-billable flags map to a custom Activity field. ActivityDate preserves the original timesheet date for chronological integrity.

Metis timesheet entries that have no associated Job are flagged as orphan records in the pre-migration audit. We present the customer with three options per orphan entry: assign to a default Pipedrive Deal (customer specifies which), skip the entry and document it in a skip file, or create a placeholder 'Unassigned' custom object to receive all orphans. We do not silently drop orphan entries — they are always mapped or documented.

Metis People Expenses map to Pipedrive Deal custom fields if the customer's expense data is simple (expense amount, category, date, billable flag). If expense data is complex with receipt references, approval status, and multiple line items, we create a custom object 'Expense' with lookup to Person and Organization, and map expense category, amount, date, and status fields. Receipt images are handled separately — see the 'Receipt images exported as separate files' gotcha.

Metis Central Expenses (agency-level overhead costs) have no direct Pipedrive equivalent. We map them to the same custom Expense object used for People Expenses with a type区分 field set to 'Central', or to a Note attached to the Organization if the customer has no expense tracking requirements in Pipedrive. The mapping approach is confirmed during scoping based on whether the customer needs to track overhead costs against Pipedrive Deals or Organizations.

Metis does not have a formal Owner/User separation as a CRM concept. We extract any person referenced as an opportunity owner or job assignee and match by email to Pipedrive User records. Any Metis owner without a matching Pipedrive User goes to a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes. Pipedrive requires users to be set up before migration — if Import2 is initiated before user provisioning, all data is owned by the migration-initiating user, which breaks assignment reporting.

Metis Resourcing Reports are a reporting view combining People availability with Job assignments, not transactional records. The underlying data (People availability windows, Job assignments, utilization percentages) must be reconstructed from the People zone and Jobs zone exports. We extract the source data and deliver a written reconstruction plan for the customer's admin to implement in Pipedrive as a custom report or via a third-party resource management tool. The view itself does not migrate.

Metis offers a 'Xero-friendly People Expenses' export that reformats expense data into Xero-compatible schema. This is a destination-side format, not a source object. We extract the standard People Expenses CSV as the migration source and handle Xero mapping as a separate transformation step if the customer uses Xero as their accounting platform. The Xero-friendly export format is not used as a migration source because it strips Metis-native fields required for reconciliation.