Cliche, but true none the less
It's been used to describe the design process, retail service and repair businesses, and it's just as true for data conversion. You can have it cheap, fast, and good, but not all at the same time. Most of the time, you can only pick two. And that's really a part of the decision-making when it comes to how you want to convert your data from an old system into FundRaiser.
FundRaiser Upgraders get all three
The rare exception to the "pick two" logic is when a current FundRaiser user is moving up to another FundRaiser product, like from Basic to Spark or Select, or from Spark/Select to Professional. In these cases, you get all three: cheap, fast, and good, because the products have all been developed by the same teams, and there are no hidden stumbling blocks to worry about. In these cases, there are special import features and functions in the File menu to facilitate bringing in old data to the new system, without a lot of hassle, but with quite a few choices as to how to treat the incoming data.
Basic to Spark/Select/Professional
When upgrading from FundRaiser Basic, the import process knows exactly where all the demographic information is supposed to go, and it can also bring in all the gifts for each name record without any problems. The real decisions will lie in how you want the codes utilized in the new system, because there will be many more possibilities than were allowed in Basic. Then, too, there were some "work-arounds" suggested for Basic that are no longer needed once you upgrade, and those will have to be addressed. One of those was a way to identify folks who didn't want all mailings. In Spark/Select/Professional there is a "preference" setting to "Exclude" someone from general mailings, but no such preference existed in Basic. The workaround was to put a decimal point at the beginning of the postal code so that those records could be kept out of a query whose criteria included a postal code range of "00001" through "99999".
Other systems to FundRaiser
This is where the "Pick Two" idea is going to become important for you. As Sasha outlines in her blog, there are several ways to bring information from your old system to FundRaiser, and each has it's strengths and weaknesses. When you come right down to it, though, it still involves picking two of the three components: quality of data transfer, time involved, cost of the process. And it will always be a compromise, no matter which two aspects are most critical to your organization. Just being aware that compromise is necessary, and being aware of your organization's priorities, and being aware of your staff's capabilities, will all help you to make the choices that lead you to acceptable data conversion results.