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Before & after: centralizing customer fields, categories, and teams on the group level
Before & after: centralizing customer fields, categories, and teams on the group level

Learn how to consolidate and centralize your data management and control custom fields, expense categories, and teams for the whole group.

Updated over a month ago

Currently, existing customers with two or more entities registered in Payhawk configure their custom fields, expense categories, and teams separately for each entity. Even though some entities may share part or all of that data, Payhawk administrators do not have the option to consolidate it in a single place for the whole group.

What is changing?

Now customers can migrate their custom field, category, and team data from each entity, and match and merge it on the group level so that they can have centralized control over it.

Custom fields, categories, and teams are the master data that is required for the future centralized management of workflows and budgets within Payhawk. Therefore, it is recommended that customers take the needed steps to migrate their data to the group level proactively.

Even if customers decide not to migrate their data by 31 January 2025, their custom fields, categories, and teams with their corresponding values will be automatically migrated by the Payhawk system. Automatic migration means that the system will migrate the entities' data based on specific criteria that will allow it to identify matching data and merge it for the group. If these criteria are not fulfilled, the system will not merge the data and will leave it as is in the respective entity with no changes to its visibility or settings. The data the system doesn't merge will need to be migrated manually by a Payhawk administrator afterward.

Payhawk values your data. Rest assured that during the auto-migration process, all your company's data will be safely retained and your Payhawk accounts will be fully operational.

Consolidating your entities' data on the group level with the Payhawk migration wizard

When customers proactively start the migration of their entities' custom fields, categories, and teams, they'll be guided by the Payhawk migration wizard. They can pause the process at any time and their progress will be saved by the system so that they can resume the migration at a convenient time from where they left off.

The wizard will show the data that has been identified by the system as identical across two or more of your entities. However, you can override the system’s suggestions and extract part or all of the suggested data to the respective entity and out of the group level before confirming the merge.

Even if you've already begun the migration process, you can switch to an automated migration at any time by selecting the Complete migration option. In such cases, the system will apply the criteria for automatically merging your data and, again - if any data was not migrated automatically, a Payhawk administrator will need to manually merge it at their convenience.

Criteria Payhawk applies when automatically merging entities' data on the group level

The automatic migration is applied int he the following two cases:

  • When the Payhawk administrator explicitly selects the Complete migration option.

  • When the migration hasn't been done by 31 January 2025.

During the migration with the Payhawk migration wizard, the system will again apply the criteria for automatic migration but it will not merge it unless the Payhawk administrator explicitly confirms that the data is OK to be merged.

The Payhawk system will apply the following auto-merge criteria when automatically merging your custom fields, categories, and teams:

  • For custom fields to be automatically merged across entities, they must share the same name and External ID.

    An exception applies if your company has an active ERP connection: custom fields with the same External ID in the ERP but different names across entities will still be merged automatically by Payhawk, based on the shared External ID, regardless of name differences.

  • For expense categories to be merged automatically, they must have identical names and account codes.

  • For teams to be merged across entities, they must have matching names and External IDs.

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