A first-hand guide for UK heat pump, solar and battery businesses moving off Simpro. What you can get out of Simpro, where it lands in Payaca, what gets rebuilt, and how we sequence the move without stalling live jobs.
Most of the teams we've moved off Simpro said the same thing in their first call with us. It did a huge amount, they used a small slice of it, and the slice they used didn't bend to how they work.
This guide is about the move itself. It's written from the Simpro migrations our onboarding team has run for UK heat pump, solar and battery businesses, plus Simpro's own export and API documentation.
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Clean tech install businesses, usually 10 to 50 people, running quoting, jobs and on-site forms in Simpro and finding it heavier than the work needs. It's also for teams with a Simpro renewal date coming up. Most of the businesses we've moved planned the cutover around that date, so start well before it.
Simpro's help guide lists exports, one area at a time, for customer contact details, sites, catalogue, pre-builds, assets, contractors, employees, labour rates, supplier details, plant and equipment, and contract service levels. You pick the area and export it as CSV or a tab-separated file. Most data tables, including job and quote lists, also download as CSV.
That covers the reference data well. It's thinner on history. A job list as a CSV gives you a row per job, not the job's cost centres, notes and forms. For the full picture, Simpro has a documented REST API (v1.0, OAuth2) with endpoints for customers, contacts, sites, leads, quotes, jobs, job cost centres, recurring jobs, catalogues, pre-builds, take-off templates, invoices, customer payments, custom fields, tags and customer assets. Where a customer wanted deep history, we worked from that, with API access the customer enabled.
Simpro to Payaca, piece by piece
A Simpro customer becomes a Payaca Customer. Its contacts become Customer Contacts, and its sites become Addresses on that customer. Leads, quotes and jobs become Projects, each sitting at a stage in a pipeline. The catalogue becomes supplier materials and items you sell, and pre-builds and take-off templates become item groups. Simpro custom fields become Payaca custom fieldsets on the project or the customer. On-site forms become fieldsets filled in as tasks on a scheduled event, with a document template that turns the answers into the finished paperwork.
The left column is where the time goes, and it's the reason people move. The teams we've moved didn't want their Simpro workflow copied across. They wanted the one they'd been working around.
Map the work before the data. Our onboarding lead starts by walking through how a job actually runs today, then proposes pipelines and automations. The account gets built between the second and third sessions, then the team trains on it. Data import is planned in the same conversations, not bolted on at the end.
Clean the catalogue first. One solar and battery business came over with around 1,300 materials in its catalogue. Around 500 were in active use. They exported their Simpro take-off lists, cut the catalogue right back, reloaded supplier materials by CSV, and rebuilt their common packages as item groups. Copying 1,300 items across would have carried the clutter with it.
Bring customers in, then de-duplicate. Customers go in through Payaca's CSV import or through the API, which also carries contacts, addresses, custom fieldsets and tags. One team had customers in both Simpro and Xero, so the import included a de-duplication pass. Payaca pushes sent invoices and purchase orders to Xero, which stays the accounting record.
Move one line of work at a time. One business moved all its private work over first and left a grant-funded scheme on Simpro until the new setup had proved itself. Another put its live installs into Payaca first, then moved quoting and new leads over a few weeks later. Both are fine. A big-bang switch isn't necessary and we don't recommend it.
Rebuild servicing properly. One team had around 1,000 service customers it wasn't contacting. We imported them with their install dates and set each one up for its next service. Another now runs servicing as its own pipeline. A month before a service is due, the project moves on its own and the customer gets a reminder. The engineer fills in the service form on the mobile app, and the project moves on again once the form's tasks are complete.
Timeline. Across the Simpro moves we've run, first live jobs landed roughly four to eight weeks after the first onboarding session.
A small heat pump business in the South West is a good example. It replaced Simpro for quoting, job tracking, service reminders and on-site forms, had live customers in Payaca within eight weeks, and has since completed more than 100 annual services on digital forms, with around 70 automations doing the chasing.
Set up engineer calendars before you cut over. One team accepted jobs in Payaca, then went back to Simpro for anything past "install booked", because only the surveyors' calendars were connected. Get every engineer's calendar and the mobile app sorted before jobs reach scheduling.
Load supplier price lists before quoting moves. Simpro had been working out one team's labour and material split as they built a quote. Large commercial jobs with dozens of supplier lines were slow in Payaca until those materials were loaded and the common bundles existed as item groups. Do that work up front.
Decide how callbacks link to the original job. Some Simpro users log a breakdown as a variation against the original job, so it sits inside the workmanship warranty. Agree the Payaca pattern before go-live. One team runs remedials as a separate pipeline.
Rebuild forms, don't copy them. Forms that were clunky in Simpro don't need to stay clunky. You can split a long commissioning checklist into separate tasks so two people work through their parts on site, and still produce one finished document. The mobile app works offline, which mattered to teams whose old field app struggled without a signal.
Start before the renewal date. Most teams we've moved were working to the end of a Simpro contract. Export what you need while you still have full access.
If you're weighing up the move, book a walkthrough. Show us how a job runs through Simpro today and we'll map your Simpro setup onto Payaca, including what we'd import, what we'd rebuild and roughly how long it would take for a team your size.
Simpro is a trademark of its owner. Payaca isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Simpro.
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