Migrate from MRI Software to Nutshell

MRI's property-centric contact model collides with Nutshell's one-primary-company-per-person constraint

MRI allows a tenant to exist across multiple Properties with separate lease records per unit — a common pattern in commercial portfolios where a single tenant occupies Suite 100 and Suite 200 under distinct leases. Nutshell Person records link to one primary Company. When a tenant has multiple MRI leases across different Properties, we must decide per migration plan: create one Nutshell Person linked to the primary Property-Company and reference the other leases as additional Deals, or create separate Person records per lease. Either approach loses the N:1 clarity of the MRI model. We surface this decision point before migration runs and document the chosen rule in the mapping plan so your team understands the resulting contact structure.

Lease data requires Nutshell custom fields — there is no native equivalent to track rent schedules, CAM charges, or renewal options

MRI stores detailed lease semantics: rent escalation clauses, CAM reconciliation amounts, security deposit ledgers, renewal option terms, and tenant improvement allowances. Nutshell Deal records have native fields for amount, close date, and stage — but no native fields for rent schedule frequency, CAM charges, or renewal options. We create Nutshell custom fields (Lease_Type__c, Monthly_Rent__c, Security_Deposit__c, Lease_Expiration__c, CAM_Estimate__c) on the Deal object to carry the most operationally relevant lease fields. Highly granular lease accounting data (GL entries, payment histories, prorated rent calculations) has no viable CRM representation and is excluded from migration — it belongs in your accounting system post-migration.

MRI API partner key rate limits require pagination strategy — large property exports risk partial transfers

MRI REST API enforces a partner key rate limit of 1,000 requests per five-minute rolling window. API structure metadata is cached for 24 hours, which means changes to MRI custom fields or object configurations may not be reflected immediately in subsequent API calls. For migrations with thousands of Properties and Tenants, we implement cursor-based pagination with exponential backoff on 429 responses. We also schedule large exports during off-peak MRI usage hours to minimize the risk of hitting rate limits mid-export. If the manifest expires during migration (causing 'Unknown status while authorizing partner' errors), we refresh the manifest and resume from the last successfully fetched page.

MRI workflows, automated lease alerts, and rent escalation rules do not migrate to Nutshell

MRI stores automation logic including lease expiration alert rules, rent escalation triggers, automated work order assignment, and unit availability notifications. Nutshell has no native equivalent to these real estate automation constructs. Workflows, automated alerts, escalation rules, and scheduled batch jobs in MRI must be documented, exported as configuration references, and rebuilt in Nutshell using Nutshell's own automation features or third-party tools post-migration. We provide a Workflow Inventory Export as part of every MRI migration engagement, listing every active workflow, alert rule, and automation trigger so your team has a rebuild reference. The migration itself is data-only.

MRI vendor and owner data may represent organizations already tracked as Properties, creating duplicate Company records in Nutshell

MRI allows an Owner record and a Property record to reference the same legal entity — for example, a self-managed property where the owner organization is also the Property record. When we map MRI Owners to Nutshell Companies and MRI Properties to Nutshell Companies, we must detect and deduplicate these cases to avoid creating two Nutshell Company records for the same entity. We run a pre-migration deduplication analysis comparing company name, domain, and address across MRI Owner and Property records. The surviving record is promoted to the Nutshell Company; the duplicate is merged with a cross-reference custom field pointing to the surviving Nutshell record.