Move your data in from your old system or a spreadsheet

Coming from a full backup

If your previous system can export a full backup, go to Settings → Import & migration and upload it there. When the format is one we recognise, your customers, items, invoices, bills, credit notes and the payments against them all come across in one step — you do not have to unzip it or map columns.

Your invoices arrive exactly as they were filed: the same totals, the same tax, the same numbers your customers already have. Nothing is recalculated, and they take none of your Dukaaan invoice numbers, so the next invoice you raise here is still your first.

To keep your old series going, set its prefix in Settings → Business & branding before you raise anything new. Invoices, quotations, credit notes, debit notes and delivery challans each take their own prefix, so if your old credit notes were CN-something, the next one you raise here can be too.

Coming from anywhere else

Tally, Vyapar, Busy, a spreadsheet a family member maintains — all of these can produce a CSV or Excel file, and that is all Dukaaan needs. Use the same Settings → Import & migration screen and choose the file. Customers, suppliers and items come across this way; the full history import is the backup path above.

Your columns will not be named what ours are, and they do not have to be. You are shown your own column headings and asked which is the customer name, which is the GSTIN, which is the price. Get it right once and the mapping is saved for next time.

Check before you commit

An import shows you what it found and what it could not read before anything is saved. Rows with a problem are listed with the reason — a malformed GSTIN, a missing name — so you can fix them in the file and try again.

A history file is stricter than a list: it comes across whole or not at all. If one invoice cannot be read, none of them are imported, and you are told which and why — because half of last year's sales is worse than none of it.

Customers, suppliers and items go in first. An invoice has to find the customer it belongs to, and nothing is ever created from a history file.

How far back to go

You choose: the last two financial years, or everything in the file. The screen tells you what the narrower choice leaves behind — how many invoices, and how much of what you are owed — before you commit to it, and you can bring the rest across later.

Your old GST returns stay filed where they were

Documents from periods you already filed never appear in a GST return from Dukaaan. You filed those from your old system, and filing them a second time is the one thing this import will never do.

The one exception is a month your old system has not filed yet. On the Invoice history card you can choose the month Dukaaan prepares your returns from: invoices dated from that month on come across as real Dukaaan invoices, under the numbers your customers already hold, and go into that month's return. You choose it; it is never chosen for you.

The other half of that fence works the same way: from your migration cutover date backwards, this is your old system's territory, so Dukaaan will not let you raise a new document dated on or before it.

If it was the wrong file

Every import is one batch, and the owner can discard a batch from the same screen. Everything it brought across is removed and you can import again from scratch.

It refuses if you have already built on it — a payment you recorded here against an imported invoice, a credit note you raised against one — and tells you exactly what, so nothing of yours is ever removed underneath you.