Moving to ServiceM8 from AroFlo, simPRO, Tradify or a set of spreadsheets means bringing across your customers, their sites, the job history you still need, your open quotes, and the photos attached to those jobs. Customers and sites move cleanly. Job history moves with some flattening, because every system describes a job a little differently. Photos and documents move as attachments through the ServiceM8 API. Custom forms, recurring job schedules and price lists are rebuilt in ServiceM8 rather than copied. For a typical small business it is a few weeks from the first call to switching over, and most of that time is checking, not moving. It is quoted as a fixed price after a 15 minute call.
What moves
- Customers and contacts. Names, billing addresses, phone numbers, emails, and any account notes. This is the cleanest part of any migration. ServiceM8 can import customers from a spreadsheet on its own, and the API handles the rest.
- Sites. Where the work happens, linked to the customer who pays. ServiceM8 models sites a little differently from some systems, so the mapping is decided up front and checked on a sample before the full run.
- Job history. Job number, description, site, status, dates, who did it, and what was invoiced. The old job number goes into the ServiceM8 job so anyone can trace back.
- Notes and diary entries. Attached to the matching job as notes, with the original date and author where the old system exports them.
- Open quotes. Recreated as quotes in ServiceM8 with their line items, so nothing in the pipeline is lost on switch over day.
- Photos and documents. Exported from the old system and attached to the matching ServiceM8 job through the API. See below for how.
What does not move as is
- Custom forms and checklists. Every system builds forms its own way. Your forms are rebuilt as ServiceM8 forms, which is a chance to fix what never worked in the old ones. Historic form answers are kept as PDF attachments on the job, not as live form data.
- Recurring jobs and maintenance schedules. These are set up fresh in ServiceM8 from a list of what recurs, for whom, and when the next one is due.
- Price lists and materials. Usually imported from a spreadsheet as ServiceM8 items. Worth a clean up first, because every price list has entries nobody has used in years.
- Workflow stages. ServiceM8 keeps job status simpler than some systems' custom workflows. Old stages get mapped to ServiceM8's statuses, and anything that really needs its own tracking becomes a job category, a queue, or a badge.
- Invoices and accounting history. Your accounting history lives in Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks and stays there. The migration records the invoiced amount on the job for reference. It does not recreate accounting records.
- Staff logins and timesheets. Staff are set up fresh. Old timesheets stay in the old system's export.
How photos and history are handled
Photos are the part people worry about most and the part that most often gets skipped by a do it yourself migration. The old system is exported with its attachments, each photo is matched to its job by the old job number, and the photo is uploaded to the matching ServiceM8 job through the API. A cross reference file records every photo and where it went, so anything the office cannot find can be traced.
How far back to go is a decision, not a default. A common shape is the last two or three years live in ServiceM8, with everything older kept as a readable archive export you can search if a customer rings about a job from 2019. Moving ten years of everything is possible, but it costs more and makes the new system slower to search for no real benefit.
How long it takes
A typical migration for a small trade business runs like this.
- A 15 minute call to find out what you are on, how much there is, and what you need to keep. Then a fixed price.
- Export and look. You export from the old system or give me access to do it. I look at what is actually in the data, which is never quite what the screen suggests. A few days.
- Mapping agreed. A one page document saying what goes where and what gets rebuilt. You sign off on it.
- A test import into your ServiceM8 account, which you and the office check against the old system. This is where the surprises turn up, and they are cheap to fix here.
- Cut over on a day you choose, usually the end of a week. The final export runs, the import runs, and the crew starts Monday in ServiceM8.
- The old system stays readable for as long as your subscription allows, so nothing is lost if something was missed.
From first call to cut over is usually a few weeks, driven mostly by how quickly the office can check the test import. Larger data sets, or a business that needs a lot of forms rebuilt at the same time, take longer, and the quote says so.
What it costs
Every migration is quoted as a fixed price after the call, because the cost depends on how many jobs and photos there are and how much has to be rebuilt. Half is paid up front, half after cut over. You keep the export, the cross reference files and the documentation.
If you are weighing up whether to move at all, the call is also a fair place to ask that, and I will tell you if what you are on is fine.
Book a call when you are ready.