WineDirect

The WineDirect migration checklist

Commerce7 migrates your WineDirect data for free, and its migration guide is honest about what the process skips. This is that guide turned into a list you can work through, in the order the work has to happen. Twenty items. Each one says why. Print it, hand it to whoever owns the migration at your winery, and tick things off. Source: Commerce7's migration guide

Going somewhere other than Commerce7? The “before” list and the “after” list are the same job whatever the destination. Only the middle changes.

Before the first data push

The first push is the one that sets your customer and product records. Clean-up after it means fixing things twice.

1. Export everything from WineDirect while you still can: customers, orders, club members, products, gift cards, notes, tags. Keep the raw files somewhere that is not WineDirect.
   Once Classic is retired the account is gone. The export is the only copy of whatever the new system does not take.
2. Find and merge duplicate customer records.
   The guide asks for this before the first push. Duplicates come across as separate customers, each with a slice of the order history.
3. Find orders with errors and repair them.
   “Full order history comes over, excluding orders that have errors that need to be fixed.” Skipped orders are not reported, they are simply absent.
4. Check every SKU for special characters.
   They are replaced with a hyphen on import. A SKU that becomes identical to another SKU is a collision.
5. Write down the count of customers, active club members, orders by year, and open gift-card balances.
   These are the numbers you will compare after the move. Without a before, there is no after.
6. Stop renaming clubs and other non-live data until the final migration is done.
   The guide says renamed items break the match between the first push and the final one.

Between the first push and go-live

Commerce7 moves the data. This is where the details it drops get rebuilt.

1. Re-enter Type, Varietal, Vintage, Country, Region, and Appellation on every product.
   These “Advanced Properties” are not imported.
2. Re-format product descriptions.
   HTML is stripped on import. Paragraphs, bold, and lists arrive as a single block of text.
3. Upload the additional product photos.
   Only the main image comes across.
4. Rebuild bundles.
   Bundle items do not transfer.
5. Recreate point-of-sale collections by hand.
   Website categories migrate; POS collections do not.
6. Run the separate inventory import.
   Inventory totals are a separate process, not part of the data migration.
7. Ask your onboarding specialist for loyalty points explicitly.
   They move only on request.
8. Decide where custom fields and reviews live now, or accept that they are gone.
   Neither is in the migration scope.
9. Keep Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and other data-syncing apps switched off until after the final import.
   The guide warns that turning them on early duplicates records.

After the final migration

The final push adds credit cards and the last orders. Then it is time to check.

1. Compare customer count, active club members, orders by year, and gift-card balances against the numbers you wrote down.
   This is the only way to know whether anything was left behind.
2. Expect last year’s revenue by month to look different, and know why.
   Commerce7 reports by paid date; WineDirect reported by submitted, completed, or fulfilled date. The totals reconcile, the months shift.
3. Reassign the imported tasks.
   All of them land on the first admin account.
4. Replace physical gift cards that used a magnetic swipe.
   Balances migrate as virtual cards; the physical swipe cards do not work.
5. File the before-and-after comparison with your accountant.
   When the year-end numbers get questioned, this is the answer.

Timing

Commerce7 says onboarding takes six to eight weeks depending on data volume, and wineries can stay on Classic until it retires on December 31, 2026. Counting back, the “before” list needs to be done by mid-October for a comfortable December cutover. Source: Commerce7's acquisition FAQ

If you'd rather not do this yourself

The “before” list and the “after” comparison are what I do for wineries. The export and inventory, the duplicate merge, the order repairs, and the reconciliation sheet at the end, done on your data and handed back with a change log. Fixed price after I've seen the export. How that works →