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Opening balances for Projects in BC when migrating from legacy system

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Posted on by October Sky

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When migrating from a legacy system to Business central, it is quite difficult to create opening balances for Projects/Jobs that are in progress, i.e. that cannot be finished before the migration occurs. Has anyone susggested methodologies for migrating opening Project balances, especially WIP and continuing in a stabilising manner post migration on the same project. All Project costs need to be kept together from the legacy system and placed on BC for the same project. Some long term projects exist; hence this requirement. The same with outstanding invoices.

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Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central migration

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AndrewThomas81 2,302 on at

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Ultimately you will need to post the required entries to reconcile to the balance from the other system.

Kind Regards

Andrew Thomas FCCA MCP
YouTube - Use Business Central
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Teagen Boll 3,334 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi, a lot of clients I work with take one of two approaches:

1. Work in parallel and complete projects in the old system and just bring in GL balances as they are completed. Simple, easy but a bit manual and if you have a lot of projects it can be a hard sell.

2. Setup the projects as if they have zero work done. Then use the Project Journal to post project subledger only transactions as of the cutover date to load in the appropriate costs. This can lead to errors but the idea is for costs you would have just the subledger entries and for the billable invoices you create they would need to be a net zero dollar GL impact. On your invoice lines you would just set the line as the same as the receivables account (or temporarily change your receivables account for those customers). I've taken this approach before but you typically want to create backups and test so it can add some time.

Best,

Teagen Boll, CPA

Work: Catapult ERP

Social: LinkedIn

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RockwithNav 9,225 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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You should be creating the Projects, Tasks, Planning lines and go with the Actual Cost.

WIP part let system calculate, I wont be suggesting to migrate anything.

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YUN ZHU 102,389 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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You can only do this by first importing the projects into BC and then posting them from BC.

You must confirm that the amount posted is consistent with the original system.

Thanks

ZHU

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OussamaSabbouh 18,276 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hello,

For in-progress Projects/Jobs, I normally avoid trying to recreate full legacy history unless the client really needs it inside BC. The cleaner method is to create the same Project + Project Tasks, post a summarized opening Project Journal by task/cost type/resource/item/G/L as of the cutover date, and separately migrate open customer invoices/AR as open documents or opening customer entries. For WIP, don’t just post random G/L balances if you still need BC to continue calculating WIP on the same project; first agree the cutover position, load the project costs/billable values in a way BC can read through project ledger entries, then run Project Calculate WIP and Project Post WIP to G/L from BC going forward. For long-term projects, keep the legacy detail in an archive/report and bring only summarized but auditable opening project entries into BC, otherwise reconciliation and WIP can become very messy.

Regards,
Oussama Sabbouh

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Grigorios Mavrogeorgis 2,739 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi,

this is a classic pain and there is no clean Job opening balance like there is for G/L, you have to rebuild the project history with Job Journal entries so the WIP and the cost continue right. What I seen work is bring each in progress project in as summarised Job Ledger Entries, group the legacy cost by the things you care about going forward, by Job Task and by type, item, resource, G/L, rather than line by line, otherwise you drown. Enough granularity to keep reporting honest, not the whole legacy detail.

Key point, post those opening entries through the Job Journal so they hit the Job Ledger, then run WIP calculation in BC so the WIP matches what you carried over. If you just drop a G/L balance the project itself stays empty and WIP recognition breaks later. So the project ledger and the G/L both need to agree at cutover, that reconciliation is the real work.
Outstanding invoices are separate, those come in through the normal customer and vendor opening balances, not the Job, but you link them back to the project with the Job fields so future billing and WIP see them.

Are these fixed price or cost plus projects, because the WIP method changes how you seed the opening figures? And how much legacy detail do you actually need to keep visible on the project after go live?

Glad to help - follow up if anything is unclear.
► If this solved it, marking it verified helps others too.
Regards,
Grigorios Mavrogeorgis
Business Central Consultant & AL Developer
Work: Gmsoft Limited
Blog: insidebusinesscentral
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gregorymavrogeorgis

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Gerardo Rentería Ga... 27,507 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi, good day
I hope this can help you, and give you some hints.

Solved: Business Central Jobs Beginning Balances import for Project Jobs

Walkthrough - Calculating work in process for a project - Business Central | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards
Gerardo

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