Moving to Business Central: what to prepare before you start

Switching ERP is one of those projects that gets decided in a single meeting and then lived with for months. The good news is that much of the work that really makes a difference can be done before you ever open Business Central. Turning up to the first session with your consultant with a clear view of your processes, data and people shortens the timeline, cuts down on surprises and makes go-live far calmer.

Here is what is worth preparing, step by step.

Map your processes as they really are

The most common mistake is describing processes the way they should work rather than the way they work today. Take your main flows, from sales order to invoice and from purchase request to vendor payment, and write down who does what, with which documents and with which exceptions.

You don’t need a manual. A few pages per area are enough, ideally gathered by talking to the people who use the current system every day. You will quickly spot side spreadsheets, manual steps and habits that grew up to work around the old system’s limits. Those are exactly the things to discuss, because in Business Central you may no longer need them.

Clean up master data before migrating it

Moving messy data into a new system just means having the same problems, only more expensive to fix. Set aside time for:

• customers and vendors: remove duplicates, close records that have been inactive for years, and check VAT numbers, tax codes, addresses and payment terms;
• items: standardise descriptions and units of measure, decide what to do with obsolete codes, and make sure every item has a sensible category;
• chart of accounts: this is the right moment to simplify it. Unused or duplicated accounts make reporting and setup harder.

Also decide who owns each type of master data after go-live. Without a clear owner, data drifts back into disorder within a few months.

Decide how much history to bring over

Not all of the past needs to live in Business Central. The most common approach, and often the most sensible one, is to migrate:

• open customer and vendor entries;
• inventory quantities at the cut-over date, with a reliable valuation;
• opening general ledger balances;
• orders and documents still in progress.

Full transaction history takes much more work to transform and verify. If you need it for analysis or reference, consider keeping it available read-only in the old system or in a separate archive. Make this call early, because it has a big impact on project time and cost.

Roles and permissions

Who can post a purchase invoice? Who can change a price list or a vendor record? Prepare a list of users with their actual role in the company. Business Central works with permission sets, and thinking in terms of roles rather than individual people makes access much easier to manage and review over time.

Take stock of your integrations

An ERP rarely works alone. List everything that exchanges data with your current system today: e-commerce, production software, banks, couriers, reporting tools, files imported by hand.

If you operate in Italy, there is one topic you cannot leave for later: electronic invoicing through the SDI exchange system, along with other local tax requirements. Business Central needs a suitable Italian localisation, and how you will send and receive e-invoices should be settled at the start of the project, not the week before go-live.

Plan for people and time

An ERP project is not only the consultant’s job. You need internal people who know the processes, take part in the analysis sessions, check the data and test the system. Choose a project lead with the time and authority to make decisions, and expect key users to spend part of their week on the project, especially during testing.

Test everything in a sandbox

Business Central lets you work in sandbox environments that are separate from production. Use them to:

• load the migrated data and compare balances and stock with the old system;
• simulate real working days with the documents your business typically handles;
• check printouts, integrations and approval flows.

Have the people who will use the system every day do the testing, not just the project team. They are the ones who find the edge cases nobody thought of.

Choose your go-live date carefully

Timing matters. Avoid the busiest periods for your finance team, such as year-end close, heavy tax deadlines or seasonal sales peaks. Many companies pick the start of a month or quarter to get a clean break between old and new. Also plan the first few weeks after go-live as a period of closer support.

Don’t underestimate training

A well-configured system that people don’t understand gets used badly. Organise training by role, close to go-live, with exercises based on your own real cases. Prepare a few short guides for the most frequent tasks, and name one or two internal power users colleagues can turn to with everyday questions.

Let’s talk

Every company comes to Business Central with its own history, data and priorities. If you are considering the move and want to work out where to start in your case, get in touch: we begin with how you work today.