If you are running BusinessVision today, you already know the headline: Sage has set an end-of-support date of December 2026. After that, no patches, no payroll updates, no from support when something breaks.
Start by assessing what you actually have
The first step is not picking a new platform. It is understanding your current one. Most BusinessVision installations I look at have accumulated fifteen or twenty years of customizations.
Before you move anywhere, take inventory. What modules are you actually using? Which reports run regularly versus the ones that someone built once and nobody opens anymore? What integrations exist with shipping software, payment processors, or e-commerce? Which historical data do you need to keep accessible, and which can be archived? This is unglamorous work, but it determines everything that follows.
Choose the destination based on your operations, not on marketing
For almost all BusinessVision users, the natural successor is Spire. Spire is a Canadian platform with strong support communities. It handles the workflows BusinessVision was designed for.
Spire is an excellent fit for distribution, wholesale, and manufacturing - anywhere inventory, purchasing, and sales orders are central to daily operations. It was designed for operations-driven businesses, and it shows in how the modules work together. Adagio tends to fit better when the accounting depth matters more than the operational complexity: professional services firms, not-for-profits, and businesses where financial controls and departmental reporting are the priority.
Your decision is worth doing properly. A bad platform choice locks you in for another decade.
Plan the data migration carefully
The biggest mistake I see in BusinessVision migrations is treating the data move as a technical afterthought. It is the single most important part of the project. Customers, vendors, items, historical transactions, open invoices, outstanding purchase orders, work in progress — all of it needs to land cleanly in the new system, with the right account mappings and the right balances.
A proper migration plan includes a full data validation pass. Not "the file imported successfully" — actual reconciliation. AR aging in the new system matches AR aging in the old. Inventory quantities and costs match. Trial balance matches to the dollar. If those numbers do not tie, you have not migrated yet; you have only moved data.
Build in time for testing and parallel running
Once the configuration is built and the data is loaded, do not flip the switch on Monday morning. You may want to run both systems in parallel. Enter the same transactions in both. Compare reports. Find the gaps before they are live problems.
This is the step companies are most tempted to skip because it feels redundant. It is not redundant. It is the difference between a calm transition and a chaotic one.
Train people on the workflow, not the buttons
The final element that determines whether a migration succeeds is whether the team can actually do their jobs in the new system on day one. That comes down to training — but training done properly, not a generic webinar. Each role needs to walk through the specific workflows they perform every day. The AP clerk needs to enter a vendor bill end to end. The order desk needs to take a sales order through to invoice. The controller needs to close a period.
If you start now, you have time to do all of this properly. Quietly, deliberately, and without the panic that comes from a January 2027 hard deadline. Plenty of businesses leave it too late. You do not have to be one of them.
