> This is the Markdown of a Backed Help Centre page, https://admin.backed.giving/help/administrator/getting-started/migrating-to-backed.md. Every page is listed at https://admin.backed.giving/help/llms.txt.

> This page uses Backed's default terms, such as Funding Round and Application Template. An organisation may rename them, so read each as your organisation's own term if you've renamed it.

Moving to Backed is planned with your onboarding contact and set out in your onboarding plan. You
load your applicants yourself; Backed's support team loads your applications, contracts and
milestones from your old system, and your lead Administrator checks and signs off each load.

## Migrate your active grants, not your history

Bring across the grants that are still open or still being paid: their applicants, applications,
contracts and milestones. Leave grants that are finished in your old system. A smaller migration is
quicker to check, and your team starts in Backed with the work that is live.

## Keep your old system as a read-only archive

Keep the old system for the grants you did not migrate, and stop entering anything new in it from
go-live. Agree who looks after it and the date it can be switched off, and write both in your
onboarding plan.

## Agree your accounting workflow before go-live

Paying grants from Backed is coming. Until then, payments are made from your finance system. Before
go-live, agree with your finance team how an approved milestone or contract becomes a payment, who
enters it, and how it is coded in your ledger.

## Run one payment cycle in parallel

For the first payment cycle after go-live, run the new workflow alongside the old one and check that
both give the same payments and totals. Switch the old one off once they match.

## Load your applicants without inviting them

Load your existing applicants with `Import Applicants`, with invitations off, so you can check them
before anyone hears from you. See
[Importing and adding applicants](../registrations/importing-and-adding-applicants.md) for each step.

1. Go to `Applications > Applicants` and select `Import Applicants`.
2. Choose the `Registration Type`, select `Download the Template` and fill in one row per applicant.
3. Upload the file and leave `Invite applicants to the system?` unticked.
4. Check the preview: each row says `This record will be imported` or
   `This record will not be imported`, with the reason. Then select `Import`.

Nothing is sent. Each applicant reads `Unclaimed` on `Applications > Applicants` until someone invites
them. When Backed's support team later loads applications and contracts, the people on them are found by
email address, so nobody you imported gets a second account. When you are ready, invite people from the
applicant's `Entity Users` tab with `Resend Invitation Email` or `Generate Invitation Link`.

## Check each load of your records

Backed's support team loads your applications, contracts and milestones as migration runs, and you
see each one on `Settings > Imports`.

1. **Dry run.** The support team first runs a `Dry run`. It reads every row and counts what it would
   load, then rolls everything back, so nothing it counts is saved.
2. **Check it.** Open the run and compare its reconciliation summary with your old system: for each
   kind of record, what the source holds beside what was loaded, and any problems. Select
   `Download the summary (CSV)` to check it line by line. Tell your onboarding contact about anything
   that does not match, and they fix it and run it again.
3. **Apply.** When the dry run is right, the support team runs the `Apply`, which loads the records.
4. **Sign off.** Your lead Administrator opens the completed run, checks its summary, selects
   `Sign off this run` and confirms with `Sign off`. This records, under their name and in the audit
   log, that they have checked it. Only the lead Administrator can sign a run off.

See [Migration runs](../audit/migration-runs.md) for what each screen shows.

## Spreadsheets and other systems

If your records are in spreadsheets or in another grants system, talk to your onboarding contact
about how they will be brought across.

## See also

- [Onboarding sessions](onboarding-sessions.md)
- [Migration runs](../audit/migration-runs.md)
- [Importing and adding applicants](../registrations/importing-and-adding-applicants.md)