Using Best Practices

Review the following recommended best practices for migrating your data from your existing foundation suite to CCH Axcess.

The most important best practice is to prepare your data prior to migration. This will save you time during the migration process.

Important: Staff who will migrate data must be assigned to the Full Rights security group to ensure all required permissions for this function are granted. Staff assigned to the Full Rights security group cannot be assigned to another security group that denies the permissions necessary for successful data migration.

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Batch pro forma returns in the existing foundation suite. Use the existing foundation suite's Production Processing to batch pro forma your returns to the current tax year prior to migration.

Select a primary database. If you are migrating multiple products or multiple databases, you should determine which database is the most accurate, and make that your primary database. Using the Diagnostics, you can make this one database as accurate as possible prior to migration, and then migrate it first. This will reduce the amount of time required to migrate to CCH Axcess.

Create a firm migration plan. If you are migrating multiple products, databases, or offices into a single account for CCH Axcess, you should create a firm migration plan. This should list the order in which you will migrate the various databases since each account or product must be migrated in separate sessions.

• Review your database for consistency, duplicates, and missing information.
• Make any necessary changes to your database prior to beginning the migration.

Run diagnostics. On the Data Migration Utility Welcome window, click Migration diagnostics to run the diagnostic report on each of your databases. This will check for any duplicate data that you may have. This will allow you to address any possible issues before you begin the migration.

Clients. Check the following information for your clients:

• Make all client IDs unique.
• Enter a client name for each client.

• If you use a sub-ID A sub-ID may be included as a part of the client ID. If you have a large corporation as a client, each subsidiary could have a client sub-ID. If an entire family has the same client ID, each family member could have a sub-ID. as part of your client ID in the existing foundation suite, use a standard structure. If you do not use a delimiter to separate the sub-ID from the client ID, use the same amount of characters (from one to five) at the end of the ID as the sub-ID for every client.

Example: If you are using delimiters, such as periods or dashes, to identify sub-IDs in the client ID, enter the same delimiter for all clients with sub-IDs.

Staff. Verify the following staff information:

Make all user IDs meet the following criteria:

• Not case sensitive
• From 6 to 50 characters
• Only include alphanumeric or the following special characters:
  • @ (at)
  • . (period)
  • - (hyphen)
  • _ (underscore)
• Do not include spaces
• Unique within the firm

Note: A soft deleted Records deleted from the active system but included in historical references. user ID cannot be reused.

Use the staff data spreadsheet generator to enter staff email addresses and staff IDs and make any needed changes to the staff name. Staff email address is required in CCH Axcess. The spreadsheet generator is located in the Prepare staff and client data section of the Welcome window. You can import this spreadsheet during staff migration.

• Data Migration will automatically import staff email addresses from the existing foundation suite in Office Manager > Configure Staff. You will have the ability to change the email addresses before migration.

Note: Email addresses are required because staff are sent an email that includes their user ID and temporary password they will use to access CCH Axcess.

Will you use Active Directory? CCH Axcess will now integrate with Active Directory. If you currently use Active Directory authentication, it is not required to migrate staff since you can import these staff from Active Directory. However, if you choose to migrate your staff prior to integrating with Active Directory, you have the potential to duplicate staff, which will require you to manually clean up the database.

Important: When staff are migrated or imported through Active Directory, none of the current permissions will be migrated. All permissions must be configured.

Signers (Tax Preparers). In CCH Axcess, tax preparers are now called signers. All signers must be associated with a staff in CCH Axcess.

If you have tax preparers in Office Manager who are not users, enter a unique email address for them. The email address will be used to create a staff in CCH Axcess for the signer.

Enter the appropriate PTIN, SSN, or EIN information for the preparer in the existing foundation suite.

Choose which tax return version to migrate. Tax returns can be migrated in one session, in groups, or individually. We recommend you decide on the version of the return to migrate to make the migration process faster, for example, highest version, lowest version, or version used for Pro Forma.

Note: Only returns for the last seven tax years will be migrated into CCH Axcess.

Update your current product to the latest release. You must upgrade your existing foundation suite to the latest release.

Rebuild your current database. Run a full rebuild of your current database using the rebuild feature in Office Manager before beginning migration. Use the default System Rebuild options. Leave other (low-level and high-level) boxes to their default unchecked state.

Calculate returns. Returns should be calculated prior to migration.

Migrate outside of normal business hours. The actual time to migrate your data depends on your firm's infrastructure such as bandwidth and the number of staff, clients, and returns you have in your database.

Review tutorial. Click How to use the migration utility on the Welcome window of the Data Migration Utility to view the tutorial.

Once the migration has been completed, all work should be performed in CCH Axcess. During the migration, the existing foundation databases will be in a locked state and cannot be modified until after migration has completed. It is highly recommended that once the migration has been performed, all work be performed in CCH Axcess.

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