Preparing to migrate

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 Next page: The Data Migration Agent (DMA)

Before migrating your data to IRIS Elements, you need to ensure that it is in good condition to be moved. This page will outline how to ensure your data is in a state that Elements can read and accept.

How to prepare your Keyime data for migration

Why do I need to do this?

Elements manages clients a bit differently from Keytime.

In Keytime, for each customer, you need a client record to exist in every Keytime product you are using.

For example, you have a client called Business Industries Ltd. You do corporation tax returns and accounts for them in Keytime. This means you'll have a record for Business Industries Ltd in Keytime Corporation Tax, and a record for Business Industries Ltd in Keytime Accounts Production. These records only sync up if they are linked via Practice Manager, otherwise you would need to update them separately when making changes to client information.

In IRIS Elements, there is a single client record per entity - no matter how many products you subscribe to.

In our example situation, you will now only need one client record for Business Industries Ltd. You'll be subscribed to Elements Tax Professional and Accounts Production Professional, but work from the same single client record for this client. If you later decide to subscribe to Elements AML, you will also do your AML work from this single client record. This is part of what makes Elements special.

Your data is moved from Keytime to IRIS Elements using a tool called the Data Migration Agent (DMA). The DMA will take these previously separated client records and combine them into one, so IRIS Elements can understand it. In order for the DMA to do this, we need to make sure your data contains certain data points. The data points used to match records will depend on what type of client they are, e.g. a sole trade will have different matching criteria than a trust.

What do I need to do?

The most important thing is you'll need to make sure that client records are consistent. They also need to contain specific data points to be migrated, as listed below.

These data points must be consistent in all areas. Deduplication does not employ non-approximate matching (‘fuzzy matching’), meaning that a name or first line of the address, for example, must match exactly in order to resolve the duplicate.

It is strongly advised that before data is migrated, you set time aside to review client records and ensure that data contained in the fields noted below is consistent between all client records. Mismatches will result in a duplicate client record being created in Elements.

Prepare your data

Before you migrate your data, go through your client records in each of your Keytime products and make sure each client type contains the following information:

Client reference or code

If you use client references or codes, please ensure that these are unique for each client. If you do not use them, or only use them for some clients, you do not need to add them before migrating as Elements will give each client a unique identifier during migration.

Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR)

This is sometimes also known as 'tax reference'. It may seem strange, but if possible it is essential that you add the UTR number to your client accounts for both Tax and Accounts (if you are migrating both). This helps the DMA and Elements to find all data related to the same client and combine it properly.

Incorporated entities (limited companies, LLPs, incorporated charities)

  • Company registration number

Unincorporated charities

  • Charity registration number

Sole trades and partnerships

  • Business name

  • VAT number

  • First line of address

  • Postcode

Individuals

  • National Insurance Number

  • First name

  • Last name

  • First line of address

  • Postcode

Trusts

  • Trust name

  • VAT number

  • First line of address

  • Postcode

Once you are confident that your data is in the right state, the next step is to use the Data Migration Agent to start moving your data into IRIS Elements.

Next page: The Data Migration Agent (DMA)