The Complete CRM Migration Checklist: Everything You Need Before Switching

Switching CRMs does not have to be scary. It does, however, have to be organized. The difference between a smooth migration and a messy one almost always comes down to preparation.

This checklist covers everything you need to think about before, during, and after your CRM migration. Whether you are moving from HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, a spreadsheet, or any other tool, these steps apply. Print this page, bookmark it, or copy it into your task manager. Check items off as you go.

Before You Start

The work you do before touching any import tool determines how smoothly everything goes. Rushing through preparation is how data gets lost or duplicated.

Audit Your Current Data

• Count your records. How many contacts do you have? How many companies? How many deals? Knowing these numbers gives you a baseline to verify against after import.
• Identify your record types. Most CRMs store contacts, companies, deals, and activities. Some also have tickets, projects, or custom objects. List every type of record you need to migrate.
• Document your custom fields. Open your current CRM and list every custom field you have created. Note the field name, field type (text, number, date, dropdown), and which record type it belongs to. You will need this when mapping fields in your new CRM.
• Check your data quality. Open a few records at random. Are they complete? Are phone numbers formatted consistently? Are there contacts with no email address? A quick spot-check tells you how much cleanup you need.

Decide What to Migrate

Not everything in your current CRM needs to come with you. This is a good opportunity to leave behind the dead weight.

• Contacts and companies. These almost always need to migrate. But consider filtering out contacts who have not been active in over two years, or leads that were marked as lost and never re-engaged.
• Deals. Active and recently closed deals should migrate. Deals from three years ago that have no bearing on your current pipeline can usually stay behind.
• Notes and activities. Recent notes are valuable. Activity logs from 2019 probably are not. Consider migrating only notes from the last 12 to 24 months.
• Tags and labels. Migrate these. They represent organizational decisions you have already made and are easy to bring along.
• Email history. If your new CRM supports email sync, your future emails will be logged automatically. Historical email data is nice to have but not essential.

Clean Your Data

This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that causes the most problems later.

• Remove duplicates. Export your contacts to CSV, sort by email address, and look for repeats. Most CRMs also have built-in deduplication tools you can run before export.
• Fix formatting. Standardize phone number formats, ensure email addresses are valid, and clean up company name variations ("Acme Corp" vs "ACME Corporation" vs "acme corp").
• Update stale records. If you know certain contacts have changed companies or roles, update them now. Migrating outdated data into a clean new system defeats the purpose.
• Delete junk. Test contacts ("Test User," "asdf asdf"), spam entries, and contacts with no useful information should be removed before export.

Export Your Data

• Use CSV format. It is universally supported and easy to inspect. Most CRMs have a CSV export option in their settings.
• Export each record type separately. Contacts, companies, and deals should be separate CSV files. This keeps the data clean and makes field mapping straightforward.
• Verify your exports. Open each CSV file and check that the data looks right. Are all columns present? Is the row count what you expected? Are special characters (accents, non-Latin scripts) preserved correctly?

Document Your Current Setup

Before you leave your old CRM, take notes on the configuration you want to recreate.

• Pipeline stages. Write down every pipeline you use and the stages within each one, in order.
• Custom fields. You should already have this from the audit step. Double-check it.
• Tags and categories. List your tag taxonomy so you can recreate it.
• Automation rules. If you have workflows, sequences, or automation rules, document the trigger conditions and actions. You will need to rebuild these in your new CRM.
• Integrations. Note which tools are connected to your current CRM (email, calendar, Slack, etc.) so you can reconnect them.

During Migration

With your data cleaned, exported, and documented, the actual import process is usually the fastest part.

Choose Your Duplicate Handling Strategy

Before you start importing, decide how to handle records that might already exist in your new CRM.

• Skip. If a matching record exists, do not import the new one. Best when you have already started adding contacts to the new CRM manually.
• Merge. If a matching record exists, update it with new data from the import while keeping existing data intact. Best for enriching partial records.
• Create new. Import everything as new records regardless of matches. Best when you are starting with a completely empty CRM.

For most migrations, "skip" or "merge" is the right choice.

Review the Field Mapping

This is the most important step of the actual import. Take your time here.

• Verify auto-mapped fields. Most import tools will auto-detect standard fields like name, email, and phone. Confirm that these are mapped correctly.
• Map custom fields. Match your custom fields from the old CRM to equivalent fields in the new one. Create new custom fields if needed.
• Skip irrelevant columns. If your CSV has columns that do not need to be imported (internal IDs, system timestamps), explicitly skip them.

Start With a Small Batch

Do not import your entire database on the first try.

• Import 50 contacts first. Pick a representative sample that includes contacts with custom fields, tags, notes, and company associations.
• Verify the sample. Open 10 records and check every field. Did names come through correctly? Are custom fields populated? Are tags applied?
• Fix any mapping issues. If something looks wrong, adjust your field mapping and re-import the sample batch.
• Then import everything. Once the sample looks good, run the full import.

After Migration

The data is in your new CRM. Now make sure it is right and get your team up and running.

Verify Your Data

• Check record counts. Compare the number of contacts, companies, and deals in your new CRM against the numbers you recorded during your audit. They should match (minus any records you intentionally filtered out).
• Spot-check 10 random contacts. Open 10 contacts at random and verify that every field is accurate. Check names, emails, phone numbers, company associations, notes, and tags.
• Verify deal data. Open your pipeline and confirm that deals are in the correct stages with the right values and associated contacts.
• Check custom fields. Open a few records that had custom field data and confirm it came through.

Set Up Your Workspace

• Recreate your pipelines. Create your pipelines and stages based on the documentation you made earlier.
• Configure your custom fields. If they were not created during import, add them now.
• Set up your tag taxonomy. Create the tags you need and apply them to imported contacts if they were not mapped during import.

Connect Your Integrations

• Email. Connect your Gmail or Outlook account for automatic email logging. This is the single most important integration to set up immediately.
• Calendar. If your CRM supports calendar sync, connect it so meetings are automatically logged.
• Team communication. Connect Slack or your preferred tool for deal notifications and updates.

Onboard Your Team

• Invite team members. Add your team to the new CRM and set up their roles and permissions.
• Walk through the new workflow. Spend 15 minutes showing your team where things live: how to find contacts, update deals, log activities, and use the pipeline view.
• Set expectations. Make it clear that the old CRM is no longer the source of truth. All new activity should happen in the new system starting now.

Set Up Automation

• Lead scoring rules. Configure scoring based on your criteria so contacts are prioritized automatically.
• Follow-up reminders. Set up reminders for contacts who have not been engaged recently.
• Pipeline automation. If your CRM supports it, set up automatic stage transitions or notifications when deals meet certain criteria.

The Migration Timeline

For a small team with 500 to 2,000 contacts, here is a realistic timeline.

• Day 1 (1-2 hours). Audit your data, decide what to migrate, document your setup.
• Day 2 (1-2 hours). Clean your data and export CSV files.
• Day 3 (30 minutes). Import a test batch, verify, then run the full import.
• Day 3-4 (1 hour). Set up pipelines, connect email, invite team.
• Day 5. Start using the new CRM for all activity. Old CRM becomes read-only reference.

Total active time: about 5 hours spread across a week. That is less than most people spend maintaining their spreadsheet in a single month.

Ready to Migrate?

Sambandh's migration tool at moveto.sambandh.io handles CSV imports from any CRM or spreadsheet with automatic field detection, duplicate handling, and custom field creation. The free plan supports up to 50 contacts, and you can start a 14-day Pro trial to import your full database.

If you need help with your specific migration scenario, reach out through the in-app chat. We have seen every edge case and are happy to help.