What came across, what we rebuilt and how we sequenced it when a UK heat pump and solar business moved from BrightOffice to Payaca. Written from the migration we ran, not from a template.
Most renewables businesses on BrightOffice picked it years ago, often for ECO work, and have built a lot of process on top of it since. This guide is for the point where you've decided to move and need to know what the move actually involves.
It's shorter than our other migration guides on purpose. We've run this migration for a UK install business, and everything below comes from that project or from BrightOffice's own published material. Where we haven't seen something first-hand, we've left it out.
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UK heat pump, solar and battery businesses running leads and jobs through BrightOffice who've found that changing a form or a workflow takes longer than it should. The business we moved had between 10 and 20 people, a sales team working bought-in leads, surveys done by engineers, subcontract install crews and a book of customers on care plans.
BrightOffice is a configurable CRM sold into several sectors. Its own site lists broker, lender, case management and training versions, and the company publishes API documentation. For this migration we didn't need the API. Three things came out of the existing setup:
The customer arranged the data export with BrightOffice themselves. If you're planning a move, raise it with them early so it isn't the thing you're waiting on.
Photos and site forms lived against the customer profile in BrightOffice. We didn't bulk-move those. Older job files stayed where they were for reference, and new photos and forms are captured in Payaca's mobile app against the project.
In Payaca, a Customer holds its contacts and addresses, and a Project is the job, linked to one customer. Each project sits in a pipeline, moves through stages, and carries its proposals, invoices, purchase orders, events, tasks, files and custom fields.
For this business, BrightOffice's single job workflow became separate pipelines for sales, installs and servicing. Lead status became pipeline stages and tags. Site forms became Payaca forms, starting from our standard solar, heat pump and battery forms, which the team then adjusted. Product bundles became item groups, with the underlying materials linked behind each customer-facing item so the business can see its margin without showing the customer every fitting.
The rebuild column is the bigger one, and that's deliberate. The reason for moving was that the workflow was hard to change. Copying it across unchanged would have kept the problem.
Mapping (December). First onboarding session in mid-December, working from the BrightOffice workflow charts. We proposed an adapted workflow rather than a straight copy: how fast a new lead gets contacted, what happens when nobody answers, what has to be done before an install is booked, and who chases what after a proposal goes out.
Build (early January). We agreed the workflow at the start of January and built the account over the following week: pipelines, automations, forms, materials and item groups, the Xero connection, and Easy PV and Heatpunk for design. Customer-facing automations stayed switched off until the team was ready.
Pilot alongside BrightOffice. Rather than move everything on one day, the business put its two newest sales and a handful of booked appointments straight into Payaca, so the surveyor could quote in the new system while BrightOffice kept running for everything else.
Training and go-live (mid to late January). We recorded a walkthrough of the workflow, then ran a training session with the office leads, who became the people the rest of the team asks first. Customer contacts went in by bulk upload, leads from suppliers started arriving as projects through Zapier, and the team was working in Payaca by the end of January.
From the first onboarding session to team training was about five weeks, with Christmas in the middle. The build itself took about a week.
Projects carried across mid-job need a decision on invoicing. Customers bulk upload in Payaca, but projects don't through the app, so our onboarding team creates any you want brought across. If a job is already partly invoiced, keep invoicing it in your accounting software rather than raising the rest in Payaca, or the figures get messy.
Carried-across jobs won't finish on their own. A project with no invoice raised doesn't reach Complete when the pipeline expects payment. For the few legacy jobs that came across with no value on them, the fix was to raise the final invoice, mark it sent, then record it as paid.
Check your Xero contacts before you import them. Payaca's Xero import brings in every contact, suppliers included. If the list is messy, skip it, because customers link to Xero contacts as invoices are pushed anyway.
The branded sales pack works differently. In BrightOffice, the quote was merged into the middle of the business's own "why choose us" PDF. In Payaca, the proposal is an interactive page the customer signs online, and the sales pack goes in as an attachment on the proposal or into a branded HTML email template.
Bundle your materials. Uploading every component as a separate line on a quote makes proposals long. Grouping them into packages, with the materials linked behind each item for costing, gave the surveyor a quote he could build in a few clicks.
A heat pump and solar business in the North West, with 10 to 20 people, moved from BrightOffice to Payaca in January 2026 and retired BrightOffice. Nine months on, around 300 to 400 new projects a month come through its pipelines, roughly 90 automations keep them moving, and more than 15,000 automated texts and emails have gone out. A lead the office can't reach still gets a text and an email straight away, and the founders can see where any job is without ringing the office.
If you're on BrightOffice and thinking about a move, book a walkthrough. Bring your workflow charts and we'll map your BrightOffice setup onto Payaca with you.
BrightOffice is a trademark of its owner. Payaca isn't affiliated with or endorsed by BrightOffice.
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