Set your Migration Boundary
The day your old system stopped and Pippin's books start. Every opening import is dated from it, and it locks on the first import.
Before you start
The Migration Boundary is one date: the last day your old system is authoritative, and the day Pippin’s books open.
It is not a preference. Every part of the opening import measures from it — the opening trial balance is dated at it, Balance-Forward Invoices are dated at it, and the age of everything your Clients owe is counted from it rather than from today.
A month on or after the Boundary cannot be imported, because it is already in the ledger. Pippin refuses those rows and says so.
Pick the end of a month, and ideally the end of a quarter or a fiscal year — it is where your old system’s figures are already agreed.
What comes across
A Migration brings the position your books are in and the documents still outstanding. It does not bring your history.
| Arrives | Does not |
|---|---|
| The opening trial balance, as one balanced entry | Closed Invoices |
| Open Bills, at their original dates | Historical Payments |
| What Clients still owe, as Balance-Forward Invoices | General ledger detail |
| Chart of Accounts, Clients, Vendors, Services |
The third refusal is a choice rather than a wall, and it is the one worth understanding. An opening trial balance already carries every prior year’s result inside retained earnings. Importing the detail behind those years would count the same profit twice — once as history, once as equity.
Steps
- Open Settings › Import your books.
- Set the Migration Boundary. This is the date everything below is measured from.
- Import the Chart of Accounts first, then Clients, Vendors and Services. Each import previews what it will create, update or leave alone before writing anything.
- Import the opening trial balance. Pippin fits it to a single balanced entry with Opening Balance Equity as the plug, and deliberately leaves out the A/R and A/P control balances — the open items below create those.
- Import open Bills, then open receivables.
- Check the result under Migration verification, which compares what arrived against what you said was coming.
Good to know
The Boundary locks on the first import. It has to: everything already taken is dated against it. It releases on its own once nothing imported remains, so the way to change your mind is to undo the imports — Settings › Import your books, one batch at a time.
Found three Bills and two Invoices you missed? Run the Import again. A re-run adds: it takes what is new and refuses every document it has already taken. There is no need to start over, and no way to double up by trying.
Rehearse in a scratch Org first. An open receivables import creates real, finalized Stripe invoices against real customers, and the only way back from a mistaken batch is voiding them one at a time.