How to migrate your MCA CRM data

Before exporting anything, decide what you actually need in the new system. Most shops bring across:

• Open leads you are still working, with status, source and assigned rep.
• Merchants and owners you have funded or expect to renew.
• Open deals, with their current stage and requested amount.
• Lenders, with their submission emails and criteria.
• Funded deals inside their renewal window, so renewals are not lost in the move.

Dead leads from three years ago can stay in an archive file. A smaller, cleaner import is easier to check.

Most CRMs have an export or report tool that produces a CSV. If you cannot find one, ask your current vendor's support for a CSV export of leads, merchants, contacts and deals, and ask for every field, including custom ones. If you work from spreadsheets, you already have your export: gather the tabs into one file per record type.

• One header row, one record per row.
• Split full names into first and last if your file has them combined.
• Normalise phone numbers and states (two-letter codes).
• Remove obvious junk rows and test records.
• Keep a column with the old system's record ID; it makes checking the import easy.
• Save as CSV or XLSX. Both import.

Upload the file to lead import, match each column to a field once, and save the mapping as a preset for the next file. Duplicates are detected and skipped, so running the same file twice does not double your data. Fields with no match can go into custom fields you create on leads, merchants and deals.

Lenders have their own CSV import: name, type, submission email and the basics. Add each lender's criteria afterwards, or use the quick criteria form for the common limits, so lender matching works from day one. Then convert open leads into merchant, owner and deal records in one step.

If your team is used to the status names common in MCA CRMs, you will not have to retrain them from zero: the deal pipeline ships 22 statuses in five phases, from app in and collecting docs through funded and in repayment, paid in full and dead. Lead statuses include hot, cold and app out, with an attempt counter. Imported rows arrive as leads with one status you pick for the whole file, and columns that have no matching field (your old status, for example) are kept with the lead as extra data. If you want leads sorted by status on day one, split the file by status and import each part with the matching status.

Set roles for each person (owner, manager, agent, processor, read-only) and decide whether agents see only their own deals.

For one week, work every new lead and deal in the new system while the old one stays read-only for lookups. By the end of the week the team knows where everything is, and you have found the fields you forgot to map.

• Spot-check twenty records against the old system using the old record ID.
• Confirm every open deal has an owner and a stage.
• Check funded deals have the right paid-in figures so the renewal list is correct.
• Do a final export of anything that changed in the old system during the week.

Ready to plan it? Request access or check the pricing.