Moving your brokerage book off Zoho

Most brokerages that come to Valentry run their book in a general CRM, often Zoho, alongside spreadsheets and email folders. The book is valuable and messy in equal measure. This is how we move it without losing anything and without pretending it is cleaner than it is.

1. Export what you have

Export each Zoho module you use (clients, policies and the rest) as CSV. Do not clean the files first. The import works with the data as it is, and edits made in a spreadsheet are edits nobody can trace later.

2. Let the import read the file

Valentry accepts any CSV. Before anything is written, it profiles every column: what kind of values it holds, how many are blank and which distinct values appear. You map from that profile, not from a guess at what the header means.

• Map any column to any target field on clients or policies.
• Turn an unmapped column into a custom field in one step, typed and with its options already filled from the profile.
• Save the mapping and reuse it for the next file or the next run.

3. Keep the source value, always

Exports carry the history of how a CRM was used. A status column might hold the literal text true or false. A FICA column might be blank for most of the book. Valentry normalises each value for the product to work with and keeps the original source value next to it, so nothing is silently rewritten.

4. Dry run, then commit

Every import can run as a dry run first. You see the reconciliation per row (created, updated, skipped or flagged) before a single record is written. When the preview is right, you commit.

5. Re-run to correct, not to duplicate

Writes are keyed on the source record's own ID. Running the same file again updates the records it created rather than adding a second copy. If a mapping was wrong, fix it and run again; the book converges on the corrected version.

6. Documents that arrive without a client

Some documents in an export are not linked to any client, and some arrive as metadata without the original file. Both are kept and both are shown for what they are, in a data-quality queue rather than dropped. Someone can link them later with the full record in front of them.

A practical order of work

1. Agree the scope in discovery: which modules, how much history, which documents.
2. Import clients first, then policies, so every policy has a client to attach to.
3. Dry run each file and review the flagged rows with the person who knows the book.
4. Commit, then spot-check a handful of Client 360 pages against Zoho.
5. Run the final export and re-import on cut-over day. Because re-runs update in place, only what changed moves.