How to migrate an institute off spreadsheets

Most migrations fail the same way: somebody moves everything at once, finds four columns nobody can explain, and stops. Move what is already structured, and leave the archaeology for later — or forever.

Move people first, and only people

People are the only thing everything else references, so import them before courses, before fees, before anything. Algoryq Learn imports people from CSV with a per-row error report rather than an all-or-nothing failure, so a bad phone number in row 400 does not cost you the other 399.

One decision before you start: people are added by invitation. No route lets an administrator set somebody else’s password, deliberately — so an import creates invitations, and accounts exist once people accept them.

Then courses, then the current term

• Import the course catalogue. Titles, categories and structure — not content.
• Create the batches that are running now. Not last year’s.
• Enrol the learners who are actually attending.
• Stop. Run one term. Then decide what else is worth moving.

What to leave behind

Historic attendance, closed enquiries from two years ago, the fee ledger from before your current pricing. Keep the spreadsheet read-only in a folder. The cost of importing data nobody will query again is not the import — it is that every report afterwards has to explain a discontinuity.

The fees exception

Outstanding invoices are the one historic thing worth carrying, because somebody will chase them. Import them as issued invoices with their real dates, not as new ones — an invoice line copies its description at issue precisely so last year’s invoice still says what was sold.