How do I migrate to WolfAdmin from another system?

Moving your business to WolfAdmin? You don't need to recapture anything. The Migration Hub walks you through importing your customers, suppliers, stock, opening balances and (optionally) documents - step by step, in the right order, with a preview before anything is saved.

Before you start: what you'll need

• Exports from your previous system. CSV exports from QuickBooks, Zoho, Xero and Sage One are recognised automatically - their column headings map themselves. Coming from something else? Any CSV with column headings can be mapped manually in a couple of clicks.
• The right permissions. Each step tells you which permission it needs (eg. Manage Customers, Edit Stock, Add Financials). If you are the account owner you have them all already. Importing documents with past dates also needs the Edit Financial Dates permission.
• A cutover date. Decide the date you are switching over - usually the "as at" date of your balance report, often a month end. You'll use it in step 4.

Open the Migration Hub

If you haven't created any invoices yet, you'll find Migration Hub in your Admin menu. It is also linked from the Customers and Suppliers pages (top right), or you can browse to migrate.php directly. The hub shows each step, what it imports, and how much you currently have on WolfAdmin.

Step 1: Import customers

• Export your customer list from your previous system (for example QuickBooks' customer list with contact details, or Zoho's contacts export).
• Click Import Customers and upload the file. Your CSV's columns are matched to WolfAdmin's customer fields automatically where possible - check the mapping, adjust anything that didn't match, and continue.
• The preview lets you page through the customers exactly as they will be created. Nothing is saved until you accept.
• If a customer code column is mapped and a customer with that code already exists, that customer is updated instead of duplicated - so re-running an import is safe.
• Using price tiers? A Price Tier column (1, 2 or 3 - or your tier names) can be mapped too.

Step 2: Import suppliers

Exactly like customers: export your supplier (vendor) list, click Import Suppliers, check the mapping, preview, accept. Existing suppliers are matched by account code or company name and updated rather than duplicated.

Step 3: Import stock

• Export your products/items list (for example QuickBooks' Products and Services, or Zoho's items export) and click Import Stock.
• Map the columns (title, SKU, barcode, prices, cost, categories, quantity on hand) - then review the analysis, which shows exactly what will be created, updated, and which stock levels will change.
• Rows marked as a Service in your export are skipped automatically (services are not stock) - map their Type column to enable this.
• Category paths are created for you if they don't exist yet.

Optional: import your chart of accounts

Using the accounting module? You can also import the income and expense accounts from your previous system's chart of accounts export. Accounts that already exist on WolfAdmin - including differently-worded equivalents of the built-in accounts (eg. "Sales of Product Income" matches Sales, "Cost of Goods Sold" matches Cost of Sales) - are matched rather than duplicated, so only genuinely new accounts are created and existing accounts are never modified. Balance-sheet accounts (bank, assets, liabilities, equity) are intentionally skipped - WolfAdmin derives those figures differently.

Step 4: Import opening balances

This is what makes your statements and age analysis match your previous system from day one.

• Export a balance or aging report from your old system (eg. QuickBooks' Customer Balance Summary) as at your cutover date.
• Click Import Balances and choose whether these are customer balances (owed to you) or supplier balances (owed by you).
• Map the name, balance and (recommended) code columns, and set the take-on date to your cutover date.
• WolfAdmin creates one take-on invoice per customer (or one supplier invoice per supplier) for the outstanding amount - a single 0% VAT line, because the VAT on those sales was already accounted for in your old system.
• Does your report have aging columns (Current / 30 / 60 / 90 days)? Map those too: one take-on document is then created per bucket, back-dated into that bucket, so your age analysis matches the old system immediately (back-dating requires the Edit Financial Dates permission).
• The preview shows each match, the amount, and each customer's current WolfAdmin balance - with a warning if any are non-zero, so you can't accidentally import balances twice without noticing.
• Zero balances are skipped. Credit balances (negative amounts) are imported as take-on credit notes - or choose to skip them and capture them manually.

Step 5 (optional): Import documents

You can also import invoices, credit notes, sales orders, quotes, purchase orders and supplier invoices from a line-level export (one row per document line). Lines are matched to your customers/suppliers and stock by SKU, barcode or description; unmatched lines can be imported as manual (non-stock) lines with the price from your CSV; original document dates are kept. Document-level extras can be mapped too: your configured document title/reference fields (eg. a PurchaseOrder column) and the foot notes printed at the bottom of the document (eg. Zoho's Notes column). For invoices you also choose the stock handling: manual entries (no stock link), match stock without adjusting levels, or match stock and deduct items - the latter checks the whole file's stock availability up-front and assigns items oldest-first.

Important: opening balances vs documents

Receipts and payments are not imported, so every imported invoice counts as unpaid and adds to that customer's balance. To avoid counting anything twice, pick one approach:

• Balances only (quickest): do step 4 and don't import invoices dated before your cutover. The whole balance ages from the cutover date.
• Open documents only: skip step 4 and instead import each still-outstanding invoice with its original date - balances build up naturally and per-invoice aging is preserved. Make sure your export contains only unpaid invoices.
• Combine both: import balances as at your cutover date first, then import only documents dated after it - the documents import has an "only import documents dated on/after" option to enforce this.

Historical documents that are already paid are best imported as sales orders or quotes (which don't affect balances) if you want them on WolfAdmin for reference.

Is it safe? What if something goes wrong?

• Every import shows a preview - nothing is saved until you accept it.
• The documents and balances imports run all their checks up-front: if any line can't be matched, nothing at all is imported, so you can fix your file and try again without creating duplicates.
• While documents are being created you see live progress ("Processing 12 of 40..."), each document gets a tick or a cross, and the finished summary tells you exactly how many were imported. If any failed, don't re-upload the whole file - re-import only the failed ones.
• There is no undo, so read each preview before accepting - and if anything doesn't look right, stop and ask us first.