What is historical data?

Every company that works in the same package for years builds up a long tail of data. Bookings from years ago, orders that were completed long ago, quotes that never led to anything. In a switch the question comes up: do we take all of that along?

The answer is usually no. Loading everything seems safe, but it makes your new system heavier and your conversion longer and more error-prone. Every extra line is a line that has to be checked. And you will never look at most old data again.

What you do need is a careful choice. For the current financial year you want detail, so you can simply carry on booking and reporting. For the previous financial year, monthly totals per ledger account are often enough, which is plenty for comparative figures. What is older does not usually need to be in the system.

That leaves the retention obligation. You have to be able to produce your administration for a legal period. That does not mean the data has to be in your active system. An archive of audit files per year covers this, and you can consult it if someone asks.

For order, quote and item history the trade-off is different. That history is not accounting, so there is no legal reason to load it. How useful it is depends on your company. That is why it falls outside our fixed switching service when it is older than the open items.

Do you have a reason to take more along, for example for a customer whose price history you need? Discuss it beforehand. Then we can agree what it delivers and what it costs, instead of finding out afterwards.