Data migrations
Moving your association's records from one software system to another, without losing them along the way.
Data migrations move your association's records, from resident contacts to payment history, out of one software system and into another. That data belongs to the association, not the vendor holding it. Before you migrate anything, confirm what format it exports in, who controls the admin credentials, and what your contract says about data return.
Who actually owns the data
When a board switches management companies or software platforms, the anxious question is usually "will we lose our records." The underlying legal question is who owns those records in the first place, and the general industry position is that the association does, not whoever happens to be holding them at the moment.
"Your homeowners association's funds and documents belong to the board, not to whoever happens to be managing them at the moment."
Source: HOA Management Company Transition Checklist for Boards, RowCal
That is sound practice and a common contractual expectation, not a guarantee that exists on its own. Whether a specific statute in your state backs up this ownership claim, and how strongly, varies. Ask your attorney whether your state's law reinforces it, or whether it depends entirely on what your contract says.
What a clean migration actually moves
A migration is not just "the new company gets a copy of the file." It has to move financial history, owner contact information, violation and architectural records, and the login that controls who can add, remove, or reconfigure users and data in the system, known as your admin credentials. If your board does not know who holds that login today, that is worth fixing before you need it.
It also matters what format the export comes out in. A file you can open in standard accounting or spreadsheet software is a migration. A stack of image files or PDFs you cannot search or import is closer to a data hostage situation, even if the vendor technically "gave you your data back." See Avoiding vendor lock-in for how contract terms create or prevent this.
Build it into the contract before you sign
The best time to negotiate a migration is before you have a system to migrate out of. Before signing with any vendor, get answers in writing to three questions: what format will our data export in, who controls the admin credentials, and what does this contract say about returning our data if we leave, including cost and timeline. A verbal assurance from a sales representative is not a contract term.
These same three questions apply whether you are changing accounting software, a violation-tracking tool, or the management company itself. See Switching software for the fuller checklist to run through before you commit to a new platform.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
Your board is switching accounting platforms. The outgoing vendor says exporting five years of financial history will take 90 days and cost $2,000. What should the board have done differently?
The manager who set up the board portal leaves the company, and nobody at the association knows the portal's admin login. What has the board lost control of?
A vendor's contract says all records stay in the vendor's proprietary format and will only be exported as image files, unusable by another system. This term primarily creates a risk of what?
Related elsewhere in the Academy
Technology
Read Switching software next for the practical checklist to run before you sign anything new.
Whether a specific state statute backs up an association's claim to its own data, and what a contract can actually force a vendor to hand over on termination, varies by state and by what your board negotiated.