Migrating from one tracking provider to another without losing history

Provider migrations go wrong in predictable ways. All of them are avoidable with a week of preparation.

Before you start

Export everything while your old account still works. Active shipment list, historical events, any notification rules you configured. Once the account closes, that data is gone and no new provider can recreate it, because it reflects what carriers published at the time.

Write down which carriers actually appear in your last six months of shipments. Not the ones you might use, the ones you did. That list is what the new provider must cover.

Mapping the differences

Build a table of every event type your systems react to, what the old provider called it, and what the new one calls it. Watch for these:

• Events split or merged. One provider's single discharge may be two events in another.
• Timestamp handling. UTC versus local port time changes your free time calculations.
• Estimated flags. If your rules fire on discharge, and the new provider includes estimated discharges, you will send premature alerts.

Cutting over

Run both providers on the same shipments for two weeks. Compare event by event. You are looking for events one has and the other does not, and timestamp differences beyond a few hours. Both are common and both are better found in a spreadsheet than in a customer complaint.

Cut over on a Tuesday. Never on a Friday, and never during your peak season. When something surprising appears, you want a full working week and a calm team in front of you.