Data Migration

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Accounting. And today we're going to talk about data migration. One of the— probably one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Sarah and I do a lot of data migrations at our firm. So I'm Artesani Accounting, but we're also the Proper Trust. And Sarah and I do the majority of our data migrations there. Attorneys and law firms, they're notorious for sticking with antiquated systems. Usually we'll have a multiple partner firm and there'll be one partner that's just like, let's just get off of this software. It's not working. It's crashing. It's desktop. I can't get my data. What can I do to move forward into the 21st century? Because I'm really working backward handwriting things. So data migration, what is it? It's where data is— what we perform is data is in one source. So let's say, for example, a PC Law. It's in It's in a product that's desktop. It's just the whole product is the whole accounting system. So it's like QuickBooks and LeanLaw all combined together. So it's got the whole enchilada. And we get people— it's a desktop program, so it's stuck and fixed in a server kind of environment. So what we do is we get the data out and we move it over to the new system. So maybe they're moving to a cloud-based, maybe they're moving to a QuickBooks Online Advanced. And perhaps what we like to do, either Clio or LeanLaw, those are our 2 best products that work the best integrate with QuickBooks Online. So basically, we're getting the data out of a PC Law, a Juris, Abacus. I can go on with some of the names of some of the really antique software, Timeslips. There's just so many. And we move them and we see a lot of this where we see data silos. So we see that they've got this desktop program that they've been using for years for their time and billing software, but they're using QuickBooks and they're not integrated at all. They can't. So we're moving that from there to a system that's fully integrated, that everything's in one beautiful sourced place, and we get the data out. So some of the challenges with data migration and some of the things we like to look at is, right, we— the client comes to us, they're just unhappy and they want to move. And this is one of the best times of the year to move. Choose the starting date. Are you going to draw a line in the sand and say 2021 is over? It's going to live in that old system. 2022, we're starting with a fresh file. We're going to start with balance sheet opening entry. And we have to backbuild the trust because, as you know, when working with law firms, the trust accounting is, is the sacred, sacred piece. That's money that's not owned by the client— by the law firm. It's owned by the clients. It's not their money, but we want to keep it all in there because there's a lot of movement of funds. There's movement of money in and out, and we want to track it all in one place, which is why LeanLaw Clio works so well with QuickBooks. We can validate the movement of the funds. If something's not moved or something is moved but not in the legal software, we can see it right away. So after we choose that start date and we draw that line in the sand, we have to bring in all the open balances. Most attorneys and their law firm work— when we work with lawyers, they're cash basis. So they'll say, I don't have AR. Well, you do. If you invoice, you have AR. You might be working in that hybrid world where you do cash basis at the end of the year, but we still have to bring in the open AR. a balance. We tie the books to the tax return and we bring in the open accounts receivable. That way, as the clients pay in the new year, we can clear out those individual invoices. We also rebuild the trust. So we go back in time. We've gone way back multiple years depending on the client, the practice area. Sometimes estate planning attorneys, it's really big rebuild. We've done matters that have had 2,000 open Actually more than that. We've had some with 12,000 open account, uh, trust accounts. So we have to rebuild all that. That's where the manual process comes in. But you want it housed in the new file because if those balances were open, you want to be able to track it back. So if a client says, wait a minute, that's my balance, that's not correct, you can go back and validate the ins and outs. So here's the retainer received, here's the money that was earned, and here's what we spent. Maybe you paid something out of IOLTA. You'll see all of that. So that's important. We also do sometimes with a client— we've had this happen a few times where the client's like, you know what, I want to spend the money and get a full historical rebuild so I have 2 years of QuickBooks data. So we're actually rebuilding what maybe was in PC Law for the last 2 years. That's more expensive, but they want to see it in QuickBooks. They want to draw that line in the sand backwards and rebuild all of the data. And you can do that a lot with bank feeds, but the historical Trust account piece is, is bigger. You can make 2 choices here. You can make a choice where you want to see the full invoice with all the glorious detail. Again, that costs more. Or we can just do a summary version because you've got it in PC Law. PC Law is not going to go away because you've changed platforms. It's still there. It's desktop. You can go back and get it. So we usually have the client just do the summary version, but it depends on the client and their needs. And some of them want us to do the full beautiful invoice rebuild and attach the documents, we can do that. It just costs a little bit more because there's more work for us on our part. And then, of course, your advanced client costs. So your work in process, your WIP. So we need to get that into the new software. And that's an import item. Typically, I think Clio doesn't charge for it. I'm not quite sure on that. LeanLaw does have a fee for that. So they would charge to pull that WIP in and also bring the client list in. So then we get to the point of doing the chart of accounts. Great time to clean it up. Time to clean up the client list. If you've got a lot of ancient clients no longer you're serving, get them off the data. You don't need them there. You don't need to have and bog down the data with every client. Again, you can go back into PC Law and look it up, back into Juris, back into whatever program. And then the catching up of the data. And this is the part that I think a lot of clients, they're very apprehensive about moving, but they're also apprehensive about, okay, so Linda and Sarah are creating this new file for us, and now the data is moving along, and we may say, okay, the line in the sand is January, but we don't complete that until mid-February, depending on the size of the file, who's going to do that work from January to February if that's where we're cutting off and making the new start? It's something we catch up for everybody. We don't leave you hanging. And then we'll end up doing a training month where we train you on how to do the work. A lot of times we end up with the client because they see the beautiful results of the work that we do and they see the analytics and the things that we can, we can put out with a file. We also may work with the firm. Sarah's flown out to a client and looked at their data and figured out who's doing what, got the job descriptions of the clients— I mean, of the employees— and then we'll rework a workflow. So we maybe have people doing redundant work, or maybe we've got gaps, and she'll— or one of us will go there to the client site and kind of figure out how to make the workflow better. And then, of course, there's always a customization piece. So there's that piece of our work that you might have something you've been using, file number or something that's specific to your firm that you've had forever. You've had it in PC Law, which is why we like QuickBooks Online Advanced. We're able to create that. We were able to add it into LeanLaw because there's those custom fields, which makes it feel a little more specific to what your needs are as the attorney. So those are the things that we work on. We Very, very much like doing this kind of work. It's important and it's really, it's so much fun to sit with a client and say, you do this, this, and this as we train instead of having to go through 12. Like, there were some workflows in PC Law that honestly were like 11 clicks to do one thing and we're like 2 clicks and we're done or 1 click and we're done with QuickBooks Online and LeanLaw or Clio. So Those are the things that make our jobs satisfactory. It's hard sometimes to retrain. I tell them, no, don't overthink it, but it really is pretty cool. So I hope that's helpful to learn a little bit about data migration and the work that we do at the Proper Trust. If you have any questions, comments, feel free. It's also something we teach our students at the Accountants Law Lab. So we also have that. Our members, they love learning from us. It's a service we can provide. Big data, we're pretty good at moving around with different tools. So On that note, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week, and we'll see you all next time. Bye now.