The very first option to consider is using a data entry clerk. The feasibility of doing this depends on the size of the customer base and the amount of data that would need to be keyed into the BillMax database. However, this can be cost-effective and timely depending on the opaqueness of the current billing system. In many cases, spending money on a data entry clerk may be more cost effective than hiring consultants to automate and program the data migration.

The downside to this approach is that errors may be introduced during data import. In addition, there is no interface in BillMax for entering historical financial data or beginning balances for Accounts. These would have to be created through database import utilities.