Migration insights & playbooks.
Scoping, reconciliation, and the hard-won lessons behind clean ERP migrations to NetSuite, from a team that runs them daily.
The shape every migration takes
Whatever the source system, a migration follows the same spine: agree the scope by record type, map the structure, rehearse the load in a sandbox, run production against a controlled cutoff, then reconcile until finance signs off. The posts in this category walk that spine. The source-specific detail lives under QuickBooks and Xero, and the destination-specific detail under NetSuite.
The step teams underestimate is the last one. A matching grand total is not evidence of a correct migration: two errors in opposite directions produce one. Reconciliation means agreeing at account, period, and record level, with open invoices and bills, payment allocations, and in-scope transaction detail checked against the source, and differences chased to the record that caused them rather than netted off against each other.
The step teams over-invest in is history. Bringing ten years across because it is technically possible adds cost to every stage after it: more records to map, more exceptions to clear, more to reconcile, more to explain. Deciding what genuinely has to be queryable inside NetSuite, and what can live in an archive nobody touches, is the cheapest decision available and usually the earliest one skipped.
The failure modes that repeat
- Scope agreed in general terms. "All our data" is not a scope. Coverage stated by record type, including allocations and attachments, is.
- Spreadsheet-driven loads. A path from source to target that cannot be re-run is a path that has to be redone by hand when it fails.
- Payments as journal entries. The balances look right and the link to the invoice each payment settles is gone.
- Reconciliation left to the end. A sandbox rehearsal surfaces the same problems weeks earlier, when they are still cheap.
- Cutover treated as an event. It is a checklist with named owners and a rollback position, not a date in a calendar.
Start here
These four run in project order, from scoping through to the go-live checklist.
- 1 How to Scope a QuickBooks or Xero to NetSuite Migration Project
Defining what is in scope precisely enough to estimate against.
- 2 Migrating Historical Transactions: What to Bring, What to Leave
How much history earns its place in NetSuite, and what to archive instead.
- 3 QuickBooks to NetSuite Reconciliation: Matching Totals Isn't Enough
Why matching totals is the weakest possible proof, and what to check instead.
- 4 NetSuite Go-Live: A Data Cutover Checklist
The data cutover itself, step by step.