Migration Checklist: Moving to Acumatica

Phase 0

Decide & Plan

Lock the decisions that scope every downstream phase — what moves, what stays, who owns it.

• Confirm the Acumatica edition and deployment model under contract. Document whether the target is SaaS, Private Cloud Subscription (PCS), or Private Cloud Perpetual (PCP), and which industry edition applies (General Business, Manufacturing, Distribution, Construction, Field Service, Retail-Commerce). Edition controls which modules and Import Scenarios ship in the tenant.

  Risk if skipped: Building a migration plan against the wrong edition surfaces missing forms and DACs only after data is staged.

• Confirm the licensed resource level and transaction-per-hour ceiling. Acumatica SaaS resource levels (Small through 4X-Large) cap concurrent users, transactions per hour, and commercial transactions per month per the Licensing Guide Supplement. Size the cutover plan against the ceiling that is actually licensed.

  Risk if skipped: Bulk-loading above the licensed transactions-per-hour ceiling degrades performance for everyone on the tenant and can stretch cutover beyond the window.

• Define migration scope by module and object. Document every in-scope object explicitly: GL accounts, subaccounts, branches, customers, vendors, employees, stock items, non-stock items, item classes, units of measure, BOMs, sales orders, purchase orders, AR/AP open documents, projects, fixed assets, attachments. Mark each as full-history, open-only, or out-of-scope.

  Risk if skipped: Undocumented scope creep around historical AR/AP and project transactions is the single biggest cause of cutover slippage.

• Decide how many years of historical transactions migrate. Pick a cutoff (commonly 1–3 fiscal years of closed activity, all open documents). Document the cutoff date and the rationale; anything older stays in the legacy system as read-only reference.

  Risk if skipped: Migrating decades of closed transactions inflates database size, slows snapshots, and stretches reconciliation with no operational payoff.

• Decide the cutover date relative to the fiscal calendar. Anchor go-live to a period boundary — typically the first day of a new fiscal year or the first day of a clean period. The opening-balance journal is simpler when the cutover lands on a period boundary.

  Risk if skipped: A mid-period cutover forces partial-period journals and double-counts revenue and expense across the legacy and new ledgers.

• Identify compliance and data-residency constraints affecting tenant placement. Capture GDPR residency, SOC2 evidence retention, HIPAA log requirements, and industry-specific retention rules that govern where the Acumatica database may live and how long snapshots must be retained.
• Assign a single accountable owner for the migration. Name one DRI plus named leads for finance, distribution, manufacturing, projects, IT, and end-user enablement. Every cross-team decision routes through the DRI.
• Document explicit success criteria for go-live. Write down what must be true to declare cutover complete — trial balance ties to source within a defined tolerance, AR/AP aging matches by customer/vendor, inventory quantity-on-hand reconciles by warehouse, open sales and purchase orders all loaded.
• List out-of-scope items in writing. Examples: historical email threads, legacy custom reports, terminated employee records older than retention, closed projects beyond cutoff. Circulate the list to all stakeholders.

  Risk if skipped: Items not explicitly out-of-scope reappear as last-minute demands during sandbox testing.

• Set and communicate the source-system freeze window. Pick the date and time after which no new transactions post in the legacy system. Broadcast it to every team that writes to the legacy.

  Risk if skipped: Late writes to the source after final export create a delta no one reconciles until users notice missing transactions post-cutover.

Phase 1

Pre-Migration Prep

Set up the destination tenant, cleanse the source, and prepare the people side before any byte moves.

Phase 2

Source Export

Pull every byte you will need out of the source — completely.

• Export the full chart of accounts as CSV. Include account ID, description, account class, account type (asset/liability/income/expense), active flag, and any custom analytical attributes.
• Export the full subaccount list as CSV. Include subaccount code, segment values, description, and active flag.
• Export the closing trial balance at the cutover period as CSV. One row per GL account plus subaccount plus branch plus currency. Debits and credits must net to zero.

  Risk if skipped: An unbalanced trial-balance export silently corrupts opening balances and forces a full reload to fix.

• Export the customer master as CSV with all standard and custom fields. Include customer ID, legal name, billing/shipping addresses, tax ID, payment terms, credit limit, statement cycle, default branch, salesperson.
• Export the vendor master as CSV with all standard and custom fields. Include vendor ID, legal name, remit-to addresses, tax ID, default expense account, payment terms, 1099 box, AP cash account.
• Export the employee master as CSV. Include employee ID, name, department, position, default branch, default cash account, expense approval workflow assignment.
• Export the stock item master, item classes, and units of measure as separate CSV files. Include inventory ID, description, item class, base UoM, sales UoM, purchase UoM, conversion factors, lot/serial control flags, valuation method, price classes, posting class.
• Export open AR invoices, credit memos, and unapplied payments. One row per document including document type, reference number, customer, currency, document date, due date, amounts, tax, and open balance.
• Export open AP bills, debit adjustments, and prepayments. One row per document including document type, reference number, vendor, currency, document date, due date, amounts, tax, and open balance.
• Export open sales orders and open purchase orders with line detail. Header and lines as separate files; preserve order-to-line linkage via order number.
• Export inventory quantity-on-hand by warehouse and location as of the freeze date. One row per item per warehouse per location with quantity, base cost, last cost, and lot/serial number where controlled.
• Export historical multi-currency exchange rates by date. Pull daily rates for the full historical window so historical document revaluations match the source.
• Export attachment metadata and binary files. Metadata CSV must include source record key, file name, MIME type, file size, and original upload timestamp. Binary files exported to a directory structure that mirrors the metadata.
• Export legacy security and role configuration as reference. Capture which users had which permissions; this informs Acumatica role assignment but does not import directly.
• Capture screenshots and configuration exports of legacy reports, automations, and dashboards. These are rebuilt by hand in Acumatica's Report Designer, Generic Inquiry, and Dashboard tools later. Treat them as reference, not import payloads.
• Stamp every export file with the exact extract timestamp. Embed it in the filename and in a footer row. Phase 5 needs this to compute the delta from the final export.

Phase 3

Transform & Map

Decide how each source field lands in Acumatica and produce destination-shaped files.

Phase 4

Sandbox Test Migration

Find every problem in the sandbox; production is not a debugging environment.

• Restore a fresh snapshot of the configured-but-empty tenant into the sandbox. Start from a known clean state so the test result is reproducible.
• Load a 1–5% representative sample of each master object via Import Scenarios. Use the Import Scenario form (SM206025); map keys first and in form order. Validate each scenario before scaling up.
• Confirm every Import Scenario maps the DocType key for transactional records. DocType is auto-defaulted on the form and easy to skip; without it, every line lands on the wrong document.

  Risk if skipped: An entire transactional import can succeed numerically but be silently misrouted because DocType was unmapped.

• Spot-check 10 random sandbox records per object field-by-field against the source. Open each record in the Acumatica UI; verify every standard, custom, and PXStringList field arrived with the correct internal code and label.
• Stress-test special characters, long strings, and Unicode in stock item and customer codes. Load a deliberately gnarly batch to confirm encoding holds across the full pipeline.

  Risk if skipped: Unicode in Inventory ID codes silently breaks downstream transactional imports in chains.

• Test the relationship integrity of master-detail loads (SO header to lines, AR document to lines). Confirm that detail rows attached correctly under the right header reference number.
• Test the Migration Mode flow end-to-end on a sample of AR and AP open documents. Toggle Migration Mode on, load samples, validate aging report, toggle Migration Mode off, post a fresh transaction, and confirm GL receives it correctly.

  Risk if skipped: Discovering the Migration Mode toggle is broken at production cutover is a hard stop.

• Test the opening trial-balance journal in the sandbox with a non-trivial subset of accounts. Post the journal, print the trial balance and balance sheet for the first period after cutover, and confirm prior-year income and expense rolled to Retained Earnings.
• Test attachment migration on a sample of records. Upload binaries from staged storage, link them to the right parent record, and confirm File Upload Preferences (SM202550) accepts every file type and size.
• Time the sample run and extrapolate to full production volume. If the 5% sample takes 4 hours, full volume will not fit in an 8-hour cutover window. Use this number to decide whether to shorten cutover scope or extend the window.

  Risk if skipped: Discovering the cutover window is too short at hour 6 of cutover is a recoverable but costly mistake.

• Have a finance owner spot-check 10 customer accounts, 10 vendor accounts, and the trial balance. Domain experts catch reconciliation mistakes that field-level QA does not.
• Have an inventory owner spot-check on-hand totals by warehouse. Inventory clerks notice missing lot/serial control or wrong UoM conversions immediately.
• Capture every defect from sandbox testing in a tracked list with owner and target fix date. No defect carries forward to production cutover unfixed without explicit sign-off.
• Get written sandbox sign-off before scheduling production cutover. Sponsor, finance lead, and IT lead all sign. Sign-off references the defect list and the sandbox snapshot ID.

  Risk if skipped: Skipping sign-off means cutover happens with unresolved sandbox defects and no record of who approved them.

Phase 5

Production Cutover

Execute the sequenced load in the live tenant. Every step has a checkpoint.

• Confirm the source-system freeze; verify zero writes in the last hour. Pull a final transaction-count report from the source and compare to the freeze-announcement count. Any delta becomes the final-delta export.
• Take a final delta export from the source system. Re-export every object that may have changed since the Phase 2 baseline. Stamp the export timestamp.
• Take a fresh snapshot of the production tenant pre-load as a rollback target. If catastrophic failure occurs partway through cutover, this snapshot is the restore point.

  Risk if skipped: Without a pre-load snapshot, partial-load corruption is unrecoverable except by manual cleanup of every imported record.

• Confirm every outbound integration and email automation is disabled. Recheck the Phase 1 pause list. Anything missed will fire on every imported record.
• Load master data in dependency order: branches, ledgers, currencies, chart of accounts, subaccounts, item classes, UoMs, customers, vendors, employees, stock items, non-stock items. Master records must exist before any transaction that references them. Validate each step's row count before moving to the next.
• Post the opening-balance journal to the prior period. Excluding the YTD Net Income line. Confirm debits equal credits. Release the batch. Print the trial balance for the first period of the cutover year and confirm Retained Earnings reflects auto-closed prior-year income and expense.

  Risk if skipped: An unbalanced opening journal blocks every subsequent load that posts to GL.

• Turn on Migration Mode in AR and load open AR documents. Load invoices, credit memos, unapplied payments, and unreleased retention. Validate AR aging by customer ties to source totals.
• Turn on Migration Mode in AP and load open AP documents. Load bills, debit adjustments, prepayments. Confirm AP aging by vendor ties to source totals.
• Load inventory quantity-on-hand by warehouse and location. Confirm IN Preferences posting flags match the plan from Phase 3. Verify on-hand quantity by item ties to source.
• Load open sales orders and open purchase orders with line detail in dependency order. Header first, then lines keyed off the header reference number.
• Load attachments, linking each to the correct parent record. Verify File Upload Preferences (SM202550) accepts every file size and type. Failed uploads should be logged and retried, not skipped silently.
• Capture the import job ID, row counts, and error logs at every step. These become the cutover audit trail and the input to Phase 6 reconciliation.
• Turn Migration Mode off in every subledger. Final step before re-enabling live transactions. Verify by posting a single test invoice and confirming GL receives it.

  Risk if skipped: Migration Mode left on means live transactions skip GL posting and the ledger silently diverges.

• Re-enable integrations and email automations only after validation in Phase 6 passes. Hold integrations off through validation so reconciliation isn't polluted by outbound noise.

Phase 6

Validate

Prove the migration was correct before any end user logs in.

Phase 7

Post-Migration Cleanup

Close the project, decommission the source, and make Acumatica the source of truth.

• Send a go-live communication to every end user. Include the tenant URL, login instructions, where-to-get-help contact, and the read-only date for the legacy system.
• Run role-based training for end users in the first week post-cutover. Hand off the Acumatica Open University course paths and schedule live walkthrough sessions per functional area.
• Set the legacy source system to read-only. Disable write access for all users. Announce the read-only date in advance so any last reference pulls happen before lockdown.
• Rebuild reports in Acumatica Report Designer or as Generic Inquiries. Most legacy reports do not transfer. Use the Phase 2 reference screenshots as the spec.
• Rebuild dashboards using Acumatica's Dashboards module. Populate widgets from Generic Inquiries built on the migrated data.
• Rebuild automations, workflow rules, and notification templates. Acumatica automation steps, business events, and notification templates replace legacy equivalents. Test each before turning on broadly.
• Re-enable third-party integrations one at a time. For each integration (Commerce Connector, payment gateway, payroll, BI tool), confirm credentials, test in sandbox first, then enable in production with monitoring.
• Schedule a 30-day post-cutover retrospective. Capture what went well, what nearly broke, and what should change for the next migration.
• Set the legacy system's decommission date. Typically 90 days post-cutover, after the final reconciliation pass and audit cycle.
• Archive source-system exports and snapshots to long-term storage. Acumatica deletes snapshots permanently if removed without export. Move them off-tenant for forensic and audit retention.

  Risk if skipped: Deleted snapshots cannot be recovered; later audit requests have no source-of-truth record.

• Document the final migration project closure. Final status report, the defect carry-forward list with owners, lessons learned, formal project closure with sponsor.
• Set a 90-day calendar reminder to delete the data-migration service user if used. If a single service user took ownership of imported records, reassign or archive it after the migration project closes.