Bring the work, not your entire business history

An established business does not arrive with an empty desk. Customer names live in a spreadsheet, invoices live in accounting software and the next promised action may be in an email. Asking the owner to move everything before getting value creates a second administrative job.

A smaller start is more useful. Take five active jobs, the customers they belong to and the actions due next. In Owner Support, open Data & connections and choose the kind of record to bring. Use your own supported CSV or XLSX file, select the sheet and header, map the columns and review the interpreted records before confirming. A template is available, but it is not a requirement to rewrite your sheet first.

Treat a column called “Amount” as a question, not an answer. Does it mean the invoice total, the unpaid balance or the agreed job value? Check ambiguous dates, identifiers with leading zeros and duplicate customers. Import external invoice references when another system issued the invoices; do not recreate them as new local invoices. The source file stays unchanged, and the accounting system remains the authority for its documents and payments.

After importing, open one job and set its next dated action. Decide whether to allow saving on your private device or take a portable backup before leaving. The useful outcome is a clear piece of work you can resume. This is reviewed file import, not an unattended connection: refreshing a spreadsheet is a separate, owner-reviewed step, and Microsoft file access is not currently offered as a live connection.

Start with work you can act on, and keep its source clear.