Migrate from PHP CRM to Zoho CRM

PHP CRM Contacts with an assigned lifecycle or status property indicating an unqualified prospect map to Zoho Leads. PHP CRM Contacts that represent active customers, accounts, or sales-qualified records map to Zoho Contacts attached to an Account. We enumerate the source status or stage property values during discovery, define the split rule based on the customer's business definition of a lead versus a customer, and preserve the original PHP CRM status value in a custom text field php_original_status__c on both the Zoho Lead and Contact for post-migration audit.

PHP CRM Company records map directly to Zoho CRM Accounts. Company Name becomes the Account Name, and Company Website becomes the Account Website field. Account is migrated first so that the Account Lookup relationship on Contacts is satisfied at the moment of Contact insert. If the source PHP CRM instance stores multiple phone numbers or address variations per Company, we map the primary phone and billing address to the Account standard fields and store additional contact points in a custom Notes field.

PHP CRM Deal records map to Zoho CRM Deals with Deal Name, Amount, Closing Date, and Stage mapped directly. The owner assignment from PHP CRM (hubspot_owner_id equivalent) resolves to the Zoho user email match during migration. If the source Deal stores a custom probability or weighted value field, we map it to the Zoho Deal Probability field or a custom currency field depending on the customer's reporting needs.

PHP CRM Pipeline containers map to Zoho CRM Pipelines. PHP CRM allows custom pipeline definitions per deployment with no published schema, so we extract the actual pipeline names from the source instance during discovery. Each source pipeline becomes a Zoho Pipeline configuration created via the Zoho CRM API before Deal migration begins. If PHP CRM has a single pipeline, we configure one Zoho Pipeline; if multiple pipelines exist, we create one Zoho Pipeline per source pipeline.

PHP CRM Pipeline Stage names and ordering vary per deployment configuration. We extract the full stage list from the source instance during discovery and map each source stage name to a corresponding Zoho Pipeline Stage, preserving stage order and probability. Stages with no natural Zoho equivalent are flagged for the customer's admin to review and either renamed or dropped with a documented rationale in the migration scope.

PHP CRM Activity records store interaction data (calls, emails, meetings) with timestamps and outcome fields. PHP CRM activity schemas vary by deployment, so we enumerate the actual activity fields present in the source instance during discovery before writing any field mapping. Calls migrate to Zoho Tasks with Subform data (call disposition, duration); emails migrate as Zoho Email records linked to the associated Contact or Deal; meetings migrate to Zoho Events with attendee and location data preserved.

PHP CRM Task records map directly to Zoho CRM Tasks with Subject, Status, Priority, Due Date, and Owner assignment preserved. Entity linkage (linked Contact, Company, Deal) resolves via the Zoho CRM ID matching after parent record migration completes. Tasks without a resolvable parent entity are imported as standalone Tasks with a reference to the source entity ID in a custom Notes field.

PHP CRM Notes attached to Contacts, Companies, or Deals migrate to Zoho CRM Notes linked via ContentDocumentLink to the parent record. Note body migrates as rich text. If the source PHP CRM instance stores Notes with HTML content or embedded images, we strip or sanitize HTML tags during transform and re-attach images as separate file uploads post-migration.

PHP CRM custom fields on any standard object (Contacts, Companies, Deals) map to Zoho CRM custom fields of the equivalent data type. PHP CRM custom field names vary per deployment with no standardized taxonomy, so we enumerate every custom field during discovery before writing any field mapping. Text fields map to Zoho single-line or multi-line text; date fields map to Zoho date pickers; numeric fields map to Zoho currency or number fields depending on the data. We create the custom field schema in Zoho via the API before data migration begins.

PHP CRM User records (login, role, assignment ownership) map to Zoho CRM Users by email matching. We extract every distinct owner referenced on Contact, Company, Deal, and Task records and match by email against the Zoho destination org's User table. Users without a matching Zoho User go to a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before record import resumes. Inactive or deleted PHP CRM users are flagged for soft-linking to a Zoho Admin user rather than orphaning records.

Tags in PHP CRM label records for segmentation. Tag vocabulary is per-instance with no standardized taxonomy. We extract the full tag taxonomy from the source instance, map each tag to a Zoho CRM Tag, and apply tags to the migrated records via the Zoho CRM Tags API after parent record migration. Tags are applied as a post-import phase to avoid tagging failures due to parent record missing during earlier migration batches.

PHP CRM stores file attachments on the local filesystem or cloud storage path without a documented API export method. We export all attachment files to a local directory during the discovery phase with a manifest mapping each file to its parent record (Contact, Company, Deal) and original filename. The customer re-uploads attachments to Zoho CRM manually using Zoho's native file attachment interface or bulk file import tools post-migration. This is not a programmatic migration due to the absence of a PHP CRM attachment API endpoint.