Rule 4: migrate balances you can audit, not history you can’t. Every migration object gets one of three scopes, decided during Discover by doing and recorded per object — with the reason — in the Toolkit’s Migration Scope sheet. That choice drives the object register, the mock plan and the reconciliation workload.
| Scope | What it brings | When |
|---|---|---|
| As-of — the default | Master data, open items and opening balances at the cutover date | Always |
| Period — optional | Balances for a period before cutover, e.g. the fiscal year to date | Only where a report or statutory need requires it |
| Archive — never migrated | Deep history stays in legacy, read-only and queryable | Always, for everything older |
What as-of loads, and what proves it
| Object | Reconciled against |
|---|---|
| Master data — customers, vendors, items, employees, banks, asset register | Record counts, key-field hash totals |
| Open receivables and payables | AR / AP ageing = the GL control account |
| Open sales and purchase orders | Open order reports |
| Stock, per item and warehouse (lot / serial where used) | Stock valuation = GL inventory |
| Fixed assets — cost, depreciation, remaining life | Asset register = GL |
| Opening trial balance per account, entity, dimension | Legacy TB line by line — zero delta |
| Payroll YTD, if mid-year | Legacy payroll YTD report |
Cut over at a period end where possible. Legacy closes the period, the opening TB is final, and the first TRANXACT period starts clean.
Three levels of period data
- P1 · Monthly balances (recommended) — net movement per account, entity and dimension, one journal per month posted to its own period. YTD, budget vs actual and comparatives work; each month reconciles to legacy.
- P2 · Summary journals — summaries by cost centre, project or customer group. Richer, still auditable, more to map and reconcile; current fiscal year only.
- P3 · Detailed transactions — replayed documents. An exception, usually T-Plus, a Countdown Owner decision logged in the Fit Ledger. It breaks rule 4 if used by default, and the legacy archive already answers drill-down.
Period data multiplies reconciliation: every migrated month must tie to legacy. Limit it to the current (or comparative) fiscal year, and prefer monthly balances to transactions.
The load sequence
Dependencies decide the order: configuration → reference master (banks, terms, price lists, warehouses) → business partners → products and people → assets → open items → open orders → stock → balances (opening TB, plus period balances) → payroll YTD. An object is "ready" only when its delta is zero in two consecutive mocks.
Calderwood goes live on 1 October with a fiscal year from 1 January, and its CFO needs year-to-date and budget-vs-actual reports from TRANXACT in October. So: as-of for everything, with the 30 September trial balance as opening balances; P1 adds nine monthly balance journals, January to September. Invoices from 2024 stay in the read-only legacy archive, where the auditors query them.
Try it Calderwood’s auditor wants to drill from the October comparatives into a specific March 2026 invoice. Should the March invoices be migrated (P3)?
No. Drill-down is answered by the legacy archive, which stays read-only and queryable — that is the "as-of + archive" row of the scope table. P3 would break rule 4, multiply reconciliation, and belongs, at most, to a T-Plus Countdown Owner decision logged in the Fit Ledger.