When switching to Abtrac from another system you can bring your legacy data with you. You can choose to import the data yourself, or engage the Abtrac team to do it with you.
Some options for requisite starting data in Abtrac can be :
- current projects and invoices only
- all information for the current financial year
- all historical information from your legacy system
Data migration managed by Abtrac
When migrating data the Abtrac sales and technical team will work with you, and let you know what information is required.
There’s a fee for each migration, including time spent addressing any issues that may arise. This will be estimated in your initial cost proposal, and a fee will be confirmed once we receive a data sample from your current system.
We can enter whatever you provide us in spreadsheet, CSV or XML format. We can also at times access data in another data source such as a database. We review the data and give you an estimate and a delivery date.
When people go ahead with Abtrac they usually agree to have us upload the data twice.
We write a series of scripts to copy the data into Abtrac based on your data source(s). The first upload is to ensure we have correctly mapped the fields in your source data to the appropriate fields in Abtrac. The data can then be reviewed and confirmed by you and your team. This usually happens before you make the official switch to using Abtrac.
After a review you may require some tweaks to the mapping. We modify the scripts accordingly and at an agreed date we receive a second copy of your source data. We rerun the scripts plus any tweaks, after which you are ready to ‘go live’ with Abtrac.
This second upload is usually done over a weekend. The only down time for you is part of the Friday and usually part of the following Monday morning. After which you are reading to launch Abtrac to your team.
Read more on the Abtrac onboarding process here: abtrac.com/onboarding
Self set up options for importing data
From Administration >> Import Data management there are two options for importing data into Abtrac yourself:
- You can use our template spreadsheet files to bring data across, or
- Use your own source and match source and destination fields manually for each item
Rules and restrictions for importing
To avoid anyone crashing Abtrac we limit the amount of records you can upload to 1,000 at a time.
Only data with the correct format, in the correct fields will import successfully. Anything that is not correct will be omitted
The routines used to import information will only add new data. Import files cannot be used to update any existing data.
Importing data using Abtrac templates
From Administration >> Import Data management > Import Using Templates you can download template files and use them to to automatically map your data into Abtrac.
What is available to import in the templates
We have two spreadsheet template files which you can populate with data.
The first workbook contains six template spreadsheets for importing: Employees, Clients, Addresses, People, Jobs and Tasks.
The second workbook contains two templates for importing: Invoices, Timesheets and Disbursements.
You can import individual spreadsheet files for each data category. Or you can import all spreadsheets within a workbook at once. Each successive template relies on data from the previous sheet – you cannot import jobs without importing clients first. Follow the numerical order below.
- Employee Data
- Client Data
- Client Address Data
- Client People Data
- Job Data
- Task, Stage or Phase Data
- Invoice Data
- Time and Disbursement Data
Each workbook contains explanation sheets to accompany the import templates.
These detail all the available fields and formats, and highlight which are required and which can be omitted.
We recommend you only populate columns for which you have data. Just because many other fields are available you don’t have to use them if you don’t have data for them.
Start by uploading a small number of records e.g. 3 or 4 clients and jobs. Then if you find
the data you’ve put into the spreadsheets needs to be adjusted you only have 3 or 4 records in Abtrac to delete or fix, rather than (possibly) hundreds.
Import data using your own data source
Custom-mapping your data imported to Abtrac
You can import data from your own spreadsheets into Abtrac also, by mapping the import fields in your data file to fields in Abtrac line by line.
It’s easiest when mapping your own data source to download and read through the explanation sheets from the Abtrac import templates before you start, to understand the data prerequisites.
Choose a type to upload.
Select your source data.
Match your import file field to an Abtrac field.
As you match a description and data length are given to qualify the match.
Start by uploading a small number of records e.g. 3 or 4 clients and jobs. Then if you find
the data you’ve put into the spreadsheets needs to be adjusted you only have 3 or 4 records in Abtrac to delete or fix, rather than (possibly) hundreds.
Abtrac KB #1007