Cleaning and Migrating Your Data: From Spreadsheets and Ledgers to Your New System
The system arrives roughly on time. The data is what runs late — and the vendor cannot fix it for you, because they do not know which “Ahmad” is the real customer.
$59Subscription — one-time, lifetime access
01 — Overview
Overview
Ask anyone who has lived through a system rollout where the time went. The answer is rarely “programming.” It is that the same customer turned out to exist three times, the balances did not match the warehouse, and the dates were all 1900.
Your data works today because unwritten rules live in your head: you know “Abu Ali” is the same person as “Mohammad Al-Ahmad,” and that the blank column means “cash.” The system knows none of it — it reads literally. And your vendor cannot decide which record is real, because that is a decision about your business rather than a technical task.
So this book is about the half of the project nobody sells you: deciding what to move, finding the source of truth per field, measuring before cleaning, resolving duplicates without losing balances, and approving opening balances you sign for.
02 — What you will learn
What you will learn
The question that may save you a month: do you need the data in the system, or only to look it up?
Source of truth per field — not per file — and why names, balances and stock come from three different places
The seven checks that measure your data before you touch it, and how to know when to stop cleaning
Structure before values: merged cells, total rows, and columns holding two things at once
The Arabic problems no translated source covers: name variants, Arabic-Indic digits, eight phone formats, and encoding
Finding duplicates in four levels — and why summing the balances on merge is not optional
The crosswalk that links your old invoice numbers to the new system forever
Opening balances: the cutoff date, the physical count, and totals that must match your accountant exactly
The dry run, three-layer reconciliation, and fixing in the file rather than in the system
Parallel running, the rollback plan written before go-live, and when it is safe to close the old system
03 — The chapters
The chapters
- Why Projects Get Buried Here — and Who Is Responsible for What
- What Actually Gets Migrated — and the Clean-Start Decision
- The Source Inventory and the Source of Truth per Field
- Measure Before You Clean: The Seven Checks
- Cleaning 1 — Structure: One Row, One Record
- Cleaning 2 — Values: Dates, Numbers and Arabic
- Duplicates and Matching: The Same Customer Twice
- Codes and Keys: The Crosswalk Between Old and New
- Opening Balances: The Chapter That Tolerates No Approximation
- Test Before You Execute: The Dry Run and Reconciliation
- After Go-Live: Verification, Parallel Running and the Rollback Plan
- The Migration Plan and Audit: 40 Questions
04 — What you get
What you get
12 chapters + a 15-term glossary
A 40-question audit + a one-page migration plan
A full chapter on Arabic data problems
Print-ready PDF included (~59–67 pages)
05 — How subscribing works
No online payment — three simple steps
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06 — Questions, answered
Questions, answered
Is this not the vendor’s job?
Half of it is. Chapter one has a responsibility table splitting the work: the vendor builds the system, provides the template and runs the technical import. You decide what moves, correct the data, and verify what arrived. Those last three cannot be delegated, because the vendor does not know which customer is a duplicate or which balance is wrong.
Do I need technical skills or special software?
No. You will work in Excel or Google Sheets with the import template your vendor provides, and that is enough for most small projects. The formulas used are basic — TRIM, VALUE, VLOOKUP, COUNTBLANK. What matters is the method and the order, not the software.
How does it relate to the ERP book?
The ERP book covers choosing and implementing a system, with one chapter on data. This is that chapter turned into a whole discipline, and it applies to any system — ERP, point of sale, a clinic system or an online store. Read the ERP book to choose; read this one when you have chosen and the real work begins.
How do I pay and get access?
There is no online payment on this site. Send the request form, I contact you personally, we arrange payment (cash or local transfer), then you get a one-time activation code for one device with lifetime access.
07 — Send your request
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