How to move twelve years of records into a new system without losing a row
Migration is where most ERP rollouts quietly go wrong. The fix is unglamorous: import onto a copy, reconcile, and only then switch.
Never import straight into the live system. Run it into a copy first, then put the two side by side and count. Total students, total fees collected, total outstanding. If any of those three do not match to the rupee, the import is not finished, however good the spreadsheet looked.
Expect the data to be messier than anyone remembers. The same student spelled three ways, fees recorded against a name rather than an ID, and a year where someone changed the receipt format halfway through. This is normal and it is why the reconciliation step exists.
Decide up front what you are not bringing across. Twelve years of daily attendance rarely needs to be live in the new system; a read-only archive is enough. Dragging everything over makes the migration longer and the new system slower for no benefit.
Switch over at a natural break — end of term, end of financial year — and keep the old system readable for one full cycle. Nobody should be forced to trust the new numbers on day one; they should be able to check.
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