Migration guide

The pilot made the case and you are ready to move the rest of the business.

Here is how to bring it across, in order.

Before you start

Three decisions that shape the move

  • Bring the open jobs across, or start fresh from the next enquiry?
  • One way of working for every team, or let each team keep its own statuses and templates?
  • When does the old system go read-only, and who tells the team?

This guide takes each in turn, with the trade-offs.

Your data

Decide what comes across

Bring it across

Export your open jobs from your current system as a spreadsheet, one row per job with the customer on it. Put them on the Onroute import template, which you download from the import page in the app, and keep its header row: the columns are matched by name.

Upload the file. Onroute does a dry run first: every row is shown with what would be created and, where a row would fail, why. Fix the file, run it again, and import when the dry run is clean. Each row creates the customer and the job, and the results are kept so you can review anything that failed. History stays in the old system.

Start fresh

Bringing only the open jobs, and leaving the history in the old system, read-only, for as long as you need to look things up, is the simpler move. It is also the chance to drop the statuses nobody used and the fields nobody filled in.

Money

Connect Xero and invoices carry on landing where they do now. Quotes and invoices raised in Onroute from go-live use your own templates.

Set-up

Set the business up the way you work

Do this before the team arrives, so they land in something that already looks like theirs:

  • Company details and your logo, which your customers see on every link and document
  • Job types, each with its estimated duration, the trade it needs, its default certificates and forms, and its own statuses
  • Status names in the words the office already uses; each one maps to a stage, so a job’s progress reads the same everywhere
  • The price list, so quotes are itemised from your own prices; on your first account we set the quoting rules up from it with you
  • Teams, regions, and each engineer’s working pattern and home base, which the routing needs
  • Text and email templates that fill in the customer’s name, the date and the engineer
  • The automations you want from day one: a text when the job books, a reminder the day before, a chase if the customer has not picked a date

Standardise where you need to report, and leave the rest to the teams. Reporting is easier when every team uses the same statuses; adoption is easier when each team feels it was set up for them.

Your people

Invite the office, add the engineers

Office users are free and unlimited, so invite everyone who books, quotes or chases. Engineers are the seats: add each one, give them a home base, and put the app on their phone. It runs on iPhone and Android and works with no signal, so the loft and the plant room are fine.

Roles decide who can do the sensitive things, such as refunds. Set them before go-live rather than after the first mistake.

Run a short walk-through for the office and a shorter one for the engineers, on real jobs. Then name one person for questions to go to in the first month.

Announcement

Tell the team

Change makes people nervous. Say when it is happening, what it means for them and where to ask. Keep it short. Use this as a starting point:

All,

From [date] we run every job in Onroute: the diary, the quotes and invoices, the certificates and the notifications. [Old system] goes read-only on [date] and stays there for looking things up.

Engineers: the Onroute app will be on your phone by [date]. Your visits, forms, photos and signatures are in it, and it works without signal.

Office: your logins arrive on [date], with a walk-through on [date].

Questions to [name].

Go-live

Switch over, then switch off

Pick the date

Set go-live around your renewal date with the current tool, and give yourselves a clean break. Nothing new goes into the old system after the Friday; everything from the Monday goes into Onroute.

The last import

The day before go-live, import only the jobs that have arrived since your last import, so nothing is created twice. Dry run, then import.

Keep the old system read-only

Tell your current software company you are leaving, and ask for read-only access, or an export, for the period you need to look back. Close it when the last job that lived there is paid.

The first month

Keep the walk-throughs to hand for the first few weeks, and watch the dashboard: money owed, what is booked and who is on what, laid out the way your office works.

Not ready?

We can help

If the case still needs making, the pitch guide covers the three conversations that come up most. The pilot guide shows how to run one crew on Onroute beside your current tool.

Resources

FAQ