Clean your job cost data before your Sage 300 CRE migration
Sage hasn't announced an end-of-life for Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, so the trigger for most contractors is choosing to move to Intacct Construction for its reporting, not a forced deadline.
Where the data breaks
- Job cost codes and cost types were set up differently per job or per office, so the same cost sits under different codes on different jobs.
- Subcontract and committed cost records are inconsistent, which makes it hard to see committed spend accurately across jobs.
- Historical job costs are hard to compare, because the code structure changed too often to give a like-for-like view.
What it costs to leave it
Bad data doesn't stay behind when you migrate. It gets carried into the new system, where it causes extra test runs, a delayed go-live, and spend reports nobody trusts once the dust settles.
Where this fits in your migration
Plan and choose a partner
The business case is agreed and an implementation partner is chosen.
Assess the data
What exists, what to move, and what state it is in. Pearstop starts here, by checking and classifying your purchase and supplier data.
Design the new system
Processes, fields and how old data maps to new. Pearstop maps the cleaned data to the new system's fields.
Test the move
Before go-live, your partner tests the move by loading the data into a trial version of the new system, often several times. We hand over the cleaned data in the format the new system imports, so those tests don't fail on bad records.
Go live
The new system goes live for your teams.
Run
New invoices stay classified, so reporting doesn't slip back.
A mid-sized migration often takes six to twelve months; larger SAP and Oracle programmes often run a year or more. Data problems usually show up during the test runs, when there is least time to fix them.
Your teams, who own the data.
Keeps systems, access and integrations running through the move.
Sets up the new system.
Cleans and classifies the data.
The data that matters in a Sage Intacct Construction migration
- Job cost codes and cost types, which usually need consolidating onto one structure before they're useful across jobs.
- Subcontracts and committed costs, which need checking for consistency before they move.
- Vendors, where duplication across jobs and offices is common.
What good data looks like
- One record per supplier, with no duplicates across entities.
- Every spend line labelled to one standard (UNSPSC or your own).
- Item and material descriptions written the same way.
- Units of measure consistent.
- Inactive suppliers and items flagged, not migrated.
- Every field mapped to the new system and documented.
- One cost code structure across jobs.
- Historical job costs classified for estimating.
How Pearstop handles it
The data doesn't need to be clean first. AI classification handles the clear cases, and a person reviews anything uncertain. UNSPSC labels are mapped to Sage Intacct Construction's fields, in the format your migration needs. New invoices stay classified after go-live, so reporting doesn't slip back into the same mess.
Work with your partner
Most migrations run through an implementation partner. We work alongside them, or directly with you. Your partner sets up the new system; we give them clean, classified data in the format their import tools need. Nobody's scope changes, and your partner's team can spend their time on the new system instead of fixing records.
Why start early
Bring us in when you assess the data, not after the first test run fails. You find duplicates, free-text lines and missing categories while there is still time to fix them, nothing has to be cleaned twice, and the test runs go faster because the data goes in cleanly. Some problems only show up once you look closely at how the data behaves, which is why it pays to work with someone who handles this data every day.
Frequently asked questions
How do we standardise job cost codes before moving to Sage Intacct Construction?
List every cost code and cost type in use across jobs and offices, group the ones that describe the same cost despite different labels, and agree one structure before anything migrates.
Can we keep historical job cost data comparable after migrating?
Only if it's classified against the new, consolidated cost code structure before the move. Migrating it as-is carries forward the same inconsistencies that made it hard to compare in the first place.
Related reading
Send us 200 lines
We'll classify a sample of your purchase data and send it back so you can see what good data looks like before you commit to cleaning the rest.
