Migrating from Origin

If you are already using Origin and wish to upgrade to Elevate to use the sales module, or the improved feature set such as double-entry accounting, integrated calendar/diary, or the customisable templates, we can take the pain out of this migration by automatically moving you from RentPro to the new platform. 

The migration process

The first step of the account migration process is to transfer all your core records between the systems. All key data stored in RentPro will be moved over to ShowHouse, but the full financial history is not transferred, only opening balances and what these balances are comprised of.

• Landlords 
• Properties (including photos)
• Tenants 
• Tenancies 
• Maintenance jobs (trouble tickets)
• Bank accounts
• Property portal configurations 
• Agency and landlord user accounts 
• Branches
• All correspondence and notes 
• All files and documents 
• SMS and postcode lookup credit balances

Transferring balances

The balances for each person or record within Origin (property, landlord, tenant, tenancy or supplier) will comprise various charges or rent which needs paid, and may include account credits or over-payments. 

The transfer process analyses each balance during the migration and will create the necessary rent, charges or credits on Elevate so that the arrears can be paid, or the account balances paid out to the relevant people. Outstanding charges will be transferred over individually, but rent arrears will be bundled into a single rent arrears balance on the transfer date. 

Tenant balances

For example, if a tenant owes £1000 in outstanding rent (2 months in arrears at £500/month), and also has £200 relating to 2 unpaid charges on his account, then his opening balance on Elevate will be £1100, comprising a single record for £1000 of rent arrears, and two outstanding charge records. These arrears may be now be paid via Elevate, with appropriate management fees applied to the rent payments only, as expected. 

Landlord (property) balances

A landlord may either in an overall position where he is owed money by the agency, or owes money to the agency. Individual charges or rental income is not transferred to Elevate, just the overall credit or debit balance on the transfer date. To see how that balance has been obtained you can refer to Origin where the activity prior to the transfer date can be viewed in full, as you have been used to. 

Supplier balances

If money is owed to a supplier for unpaid maintenance jobs, these jobs will be transferred to Elevate with the relevant outstanding balance. If a landlord has not paid for a job which has been charged to his account in Origin, this will not be shown on the relevant job, but is instead already reflected in the overall landlord balance as described above. 

Deciding on a migration date

The date on which you start to use Elevate is referred to as the "conversion date", although you may want to regard it as the "Elevate start date". All activity prior to that date will be on your old system, and all data from the conversion date onwards will be on Elevate. 

Is there an ideal date to move from another system to Elevate? Some people like to align this with the start of their VAT quarters, or even more ideally the start of the financial year, although often this can be just too far away to wait. We generally recommend that it's easiest to at least align this with the start of a month.

For example, if you decide to start using Elevate from the start of business on 1 February, then that is your conversion date. All activity up to and including 31 January will be on your old system (to which you will retain read-only access to allow you to run statements and view reports up to 31 January) and the "closing balances" will be transferred to Elevate during the migration where they will become the "opening balances" on the new system on 1 February. All activity from 1 February onwards will be on Elevate. 

Locking down your Origin account

In order for us to migrate your account, we will generally lock down access to your account from 5pm on the chosen transfer date, and the move your account data over to Elevate over the remainder of that evening so that all is ready for you to hit the ground running first thing the following morning.

The migration will be finished before midnight to ensure that rent and recurring charges are applied at the start of the new day. 

Retained read-only access

Although you will be using Elevate for all activity from your transfer date onwards, the full history of all activity and transactions dating back before that date will remain on Origin. 

You may need to refer to Origin for statements, transactions to and from the various parties, or details of historic management activities such as viewings, certificates, etc. 

You will retain full read-only access to Origin at no charge, but you will not be able to amend any data on that system and all balances will be fixed as of the transfer date so no additional rent or recurring charges will be applied on Origin after your transfer.