Signs your records are a fit
Useful records are seldom polished. They show people at work: asking, answering, correcting and deciding. A long, steady history in one or two systems often matters more than a little bit of everything.
If your company switched tools at some point, that is normal. Bring it up on the call and the scope can include both the old system and the new one.
What does not need to happen first
There is no need to clean up, export or sort anything before you request an estimate. The form only asks four questions. None of your systems are touched at that point.
How far back do records need to go?
The estimate asks how long you have been in business because history matters. Your range moves with years in business: under 3 years brings it down, and longer histories lift it a little. Your business type does not change the number.
Short answers
Can we include just one team?
Yes. Scope can be a single department, one system or one period of time.
What about a system we stopped using long ago?
Raise it during the call. If your company still holds older records, they can still be part of scope.
Do paper records count?
The focus is records kept in business software.
Records, sorted by what they show
Which of these go ahead is your choice. You can exclude any one of them.
Conversations
Customer requests, quotes, vendor coordination and internal threads. Email records negotiation and follow through.
Chat
Quick messages where people request help, flag issues and settle next steps.
Know-how
Shared drives and documents
Checklists, procedures, templates and proposals. It is how a company records the way it does things.
Source code history
Commits, pull requests and review comments that show how your software was written and changed.
Customers
CRM
Pipeline history and account notes from the first call through renewal.
Support tickets
A problem, the steps taken and the resolution, captured one case at a time.
Operations
Project trackers
Who owned what, what blocked it and when it was finished, tracing how projects progress.
Finance and ERP
Ordering, purchasing and approval workflows. Account numbers and other sensitive values stay out.
Who qualifies
Three things to check first
These are the basics buyers look for before anything else.
- You have at least 20 employees.
- The company is at least 3 years old.
- Your records are kept in business software like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, a CRM, an ERP or project tools.