Updated · 9 min read
The short answer. Let orders in transit finish in the old system, import your active leads into the new one, send open quotes again, and archive the rest. Move every lead source on the same day, run both systems side by side for one to two weeks, and keep the old account readable until its notice period ends.
Most brokers stay on software they dislike for a year longer than they meant to, and the reason is rarely the new system. It is the switch. Nobody wants to be the person who lost a week of leads, or a car in transit, in the move.
The good news is that most of the risk sits in a few predictable places, and none of them is the data import itself.
1. Before you export anything
Read your current contract first. Three things in it decide your timeline:
- The notice period. Monthly plans often need thirty days, and some annual contracts renew automatically if you miss the window. Put the date in a calendar now.
- Whether you can export your data, in what format, and whether it costs anything. Ask the vendor for a sample export before you need the real one.
- What happens to your data after you leave, and how long you can still log in to read it.
We suggest asking the export question on any CRM demo, including ours. It is one of the eight in our guide to choosing an auto transport CRM, and the answer tells you a lot about how a vendor expects the relationship to end.
2. What to move, and what to leave behind
The instinct is to move everything. Resist it. A migration is the one chance you get to leave rubbish behind, and a new system full of four-year-old dead leads is just your old system in a new font.
| Record | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Orders in transit | Finish them in the old system | A car on a truck is the worst thing to move mid-journey. There are usually few, and they close within days. |
| Signed orders not yet dispatched | Re-enter by hand in the new system | Few in number and high in value. Typing them in is also a check that nothing was missed. |
| Open quotes | Send again from the new system | Quote prices go stale quickly anyway. A fresh quote is a reason to call the customer. |
| Active leads | Import from a CSV export | This is the bulk of the work, and it is what an import is for. |
| Old, dead leads | Export to a file and keep it | Rarely worth importing, occasionally worth a re-engagement email. |
| Past customers | Export and keep; bring the repeat ones in as leads | Returning customers are the cheapest bookings you will ever get. |
| Carrier directory | Export, then re-check before adding | A good moment to confirm authority and insurance are still current. |
| Signed documents and invoices | Download and archive | You may need them for a damage claim or your accountant long after the switch. |
What counts as an active lead is your call. Anything with contact in the last 60 to 90 days is a reasonable line for most brokerages. Past customers deserve a separate decision: someone who shipped a car south last November may well ship it again this year, and the old system will not remind anyone.
The carrier directory is worth a little more care. Moving systems is a natural moment to re-check that every carrier you use still has active authority and current cargo cover, which we went through in how to vet an auto transport carrier.
3. Cleaning the lead file
Most lead exports need about an hour of tidying, and the problems are nearly always the same few:
- The same customer entered twice, once with an email and once with a phone number. Sort by email, then by phone, and look.
- ZIP codes that lost their leading zero. Excel turns 02108 into 2108 the moment it treats the column as a number, so format ZIP columns as text before you save.
- "TX" in some rows and "Texas" in others. Pick the form the new system expects and make the whole column match.
- Two vehicles squeezed into one row, or a totals row at the bottom that will be read as a lead.
One small thing saves a lot of pain later: keep the old system's lead ID in its own column. When someone asks about a customer from before the switch, that ID is how you find them in the archive.
If TruxCRM is the system you are moving to, the lead import page lists every column it reads, with a template file you can download and fill in.
4. Pick the day carefully
Switch at the start of a week, never on a Friday. Problems show up when leads start arriving, and you want the whole team there when they do.
Avoid the last few days of the month if that is when you invoice or pay carriers, and avoid your busiest weeks. For a brokerage that moves snowbirds, that means steering clear of the autumn run south and the spring run north. A quiet Monday in a quiet month is the ideal, and it is worth waiting a couple of weeks for one.
5. Cut-over day: every place leads come from
This is where switches go wrong. The data import gets all the attention, and then a lead provider keeps sending leads to the old system for three weeks because nobody told them.
Before the day, make a list of every way a lead reaches you. For most brokerages it looks like this:
- The quote form on your website, and any copies of it on landing pages for ads.
- Each lead provider you buy from. Each one needs new delivery details, and with an API it is usually a new key and a new address to post to.
- Phone lines or call tracking numbers that create leads automatically.
- Any email inbox that forwards enquiries into the CRM.
- Referral partners or dealers who send leads by email.
Move all of them on the same day, and send a test lead through each one before lunch. A test lead that does not arrive is far cheaper to find on Monday morning than a missing real one on Thursday.
Email needs its own check. If the new system sends quotes from your company domain, its sending servers have to be added to your SPF record and given a DKIM key, or quotes start landing in spam on day one. Our guide to why broker quotes land in spam explains what to check, and the email setup guide has the steps for each email host.
6. The parallel run
For the first week or two you will have both systems open. That is normal, and it is safer than a hard switch.
The rule is simple: everything new goes into the new system, from the first minute. The old one is only for finishing orders that were already moving. If you can set it to read-only, do.
Once a day, someone should open the old system and look for anything that arrived after the switch. Every new lead that turns up there is a source you missed in section 5. Fix it the same day.
When the last order in transit has delivered and nothing new has arrived in the old system for a week, you are done. Take a final full export for the archive, then let the notice period run out.
7. The mistakes that cost the most
In rough order of how much they hurt:
- A lead source nobody moved. Usually a provider, sometimes an old landing page. The leads keep coming, into a system nobody is watching.
- Moving orders that were in transit. Someone updates the wrong system, the driver's details live in two places, and the customer gets two different answers.
- Quotes going to spam because the new sender was never authenticated on your domain.
- Importing everything, including years of dead leads, so the new system is cluttered from day one and the agents stop trusting the list.
- Missing the notice date and paying for a second year of software you no longer use.
Notice that none of them is about the import. Moving the data is the easy part; moving the habits and the plumbing around it is where the time goes.
8. Where TruxCRM fits
If you are moving to TruxCRM, an admin imports the lead list from a CSV file in Leads, under Import. Common column headings are matched on their own, every row is checked and shown to you before anything saves, duplicates of leads you already hold are skipped rather than merged, and an import can be undone if it went wrong. Put your old system's ID in the external_id column and it stays on each lead for reference.
If you post loads to Central Dispatch, connect your Central Dispatch account to TruxCRM on cut-over day; TruxCRM is an official Central Dispatch partner, so searching and posting move across with everything else. The imported leads arrive unassigned, so you can share them out across the team, a batch to one agent or split evenly between all of them. Website forms and a separate API key for each lead provider cover the cut-over list in section 5, and everything is in the one plan on the pricing page. If you are still deciding where to move to, our comparison of auto transport CRMs is a reasonable place to start, and you can book a demo to walk through a move with your own data.
9. Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to switch auto transport CRMs?
The import itself takes an afternoon. The whole switch usually takes two to three weeks: a few days to export and clean the data, one cut-over day to move every lead source, and one to two weeks running both systems while orders already in transit finish in the old one.
Can I move my leads from one CRM to another?
Yes, in most cases by exporting them from the old system as a CSV file and importing that file into the new one. Remove duplicates, keep ZIP codes as text so leading zeros survive, use one format for states, and keep the old system's lead ID in its own column so customers can be traced back later.
What should I do with orders already in transit?
Finish them in the old system. Moving an order mid-journey splits the driver and status details across two places. Signed orders that have not been dispatched yet are usually few enough to re-enter by hand in the new system.
Do I need to tell my lead providers when I change CRM?
Yes. Each provider needs the new delivery details, which with an API integration usually means a new key and address. A provider nobody told will keep sending leads to the old system, often for weeks. Send a test lead through every source on the day you switch.
What is the best day to switch CRMs?
A Monday or Tuesday in a quiet month, away from month-end invoicing and the busiest shipping weeks, so the whole team is there when the first leads arrive in the new system and there is a full week to fix anything missed.