Core entrée:
order entry, invoicing, inventory, purchasing, AR
Migrating from NECS entrée
How to migrate from NECS entrée: a step-by-step guide for food distributors
1. InventoryModules, integrations, must-have reports
2. CleanDuplicates, units, catch-weight and lot flags
3. Export and mapItems, customers, pricing, order guides, open items
4. ReconcileCounts, AR aging, inventory, trial balance
5. Pilot, then cut overentrée stays read-only for lookups
Cut over when the numbers reconcile, not when the date arrives.
Short answer: To migrate from NECS entrée, list every entrée module and integration you use, clean your item and customer files, then export master data, pricing, order guides and open transactions. Load them into the new system and reconcile counts and dollar totals against entrée. Pilot with a small group, then cut over at the start of an accounting period. Keep entrée available read-only until the migrated data checks out.
NECS has been building food distribution software since 1987, and plenty of houses have run entrée for years. That's why leaving it feels risky. Your item file, price levels, order guides and years of sales history are all in it, and your order desk knows its screens by heart.
The risk is manageable if you treat the move as a data project with checkpoints, not a weekend scramble. This guide covers what to inventory, what to move, how to check it, and how to cut over without a week of shorted orders and wrong invoices. It applies whatever you're moving to.
Step 1: Inventory what you actually run
entrée is modular, so two entrée shops can look very different. Before anyone exports anything, write down which pieces you use. NECS's own module list is a good prompt:
entrée.GL and entrée.AP
, or entrée.QB if you post to QuickBooks instead
entrée.NET and entrée.EXPRESS
for customer web and mobile ordering
entrée.EOP
for reps ordering on tablets
entrée.PAY
for card and ACH payments
entrée.WMS, entrée.MW and entrée.POD
for warehouse, multi-warehouse and proof of delivery
entrée.EDI
for trading partners, and entrée.DOC for scanned documents
Then list everything connected from outside: routing, scales, label printers, AR tools and anything custom. Finally, ask each department for the five reports they couldn't live without. That list becomes your acceptance test later.
Step 2: Clean before you export
Every bad record you move becomes a bad record in the new system, and it's cheaper to fix in the system your team already knows. Spend a week or two on:
Inactive items and customers.
Mark or archive anything with no activity in 12 to 24 months, so it doesn't clutter the new catalog.
Duplicates.
The same restaurant under two account numbers, or the same item from two vendors entered twice.
Units and pack sizes.
Make sure each item's pack, size and unit of measure are right, including broken-case rules.
Catch-weight and lot flags.
Confirm which items are sold by actual weight and which are lot-controlled. Get these wrong and the new system invoices or traces them wrong.
Customer terms and credit limits.
Old limits nobody enforces will start blocking orders the day a system does enforce them.
Step 3: Export and map your data
Ask NECS, or whoever supports your entrée install, which export routes your version supports and what access you need. Recent releases are sold as entrée V4 SQL and entrée V5, so your data most likely sits in a database that can be exported with the right permissions. Then work through the data in this order:
| Data | What to bring | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Items | Item numbers, descriptions, pack/size, units, categories, vendor item numbers, costs, catch-weight and lot flags | Broken-case items and alternate units |
| Customers | Bill-to and ship-to, terms, credit limits, tax status, route and delivery days, assigned rep | Chains with many ship-tos under one bill-to |
| Pricing | Price levels, customer-specific prices, contracts, promotions, rebates and bill-backs | Expiry dates on specials and contracts |
| Order guides | Every guide, its items and sort order, plus standing orders | Guides that point to discontinued items |
| Vendors | Vendor file, terms, vendor item cross-references | Duplicate vendor records |
| Open transactions | Open sales orders, open POs, open AR invoices, open AP bills | Partially shipped or partially paid items |
| Inventory | On-hand by warehouse, lot and expiry date, at cost | Lots with no expiry recorded |
| History | Sales history at invoice-line level | Decide how far back you need (see below) |
| Ledger | Chart of accounts and an opening trial balance at cutover | Prior periods as summarized balances |
How much history?
You rarely need everything. Move enough sales history to rebuild order guides, compare year over year and forecast. A practical starting point is two years at line level, which covers year-over-year comparisons and seasonal items. Keep older history in a read-only archive or in entrée itself.
Payment cards are a special case.
Card security rules (PCI DSS) mean raw card numbers generally can't be exported from one system and imported into another. If customers store cards through entrée.PAY, ask your payment processor whether saved cards can move as tokens. If not, plan to collect them again before cutover.
Step 4: Load and reconcile
Load into a test environment first. Then reconcile, because "it imported without errors" is not the same as "it's right." Check counts and totals against entrée as of the same date:
- Item and customer counts match after excluding archived records
- AR aging total matches entrée's aging report to the penny, customer by customer for the top accounts
- AP open balance matches by vendor
- Inventory value and quantity match by warehouse, and lot quantities match for lot-controlled items
- Opening trial balance ties out to entrée.GL (or QuickBooks, if you used entrée.QB)
- Prices for 20 or more real customers and items match what entrée would charge today
- Order guides have the same line counts for your top accounts
- The five-reports list from Step 1 can be produced in the new system
Fix the mapping, reload, and check again. Two or three rounds is normal.
Step 5: Pilot, then cut over
Run a pilot with one route, one rep or a handful of friendly accounts while entrée keeps running for everyone else. Compare the pilot's invoices against what entrée would have produced, especially catch-weight lines, prices and credits. Keep the pilot short. Weeks of double entry wear people out and invite mistakes.
For the cutover itself:
- 01Pick the date. The first day of an accounting month keeps the books clean. Avoid your busiest week, holidays and month-end close.
- 02Freeze changes. Stop editing items, prices and customers in entrée a few days before.
- 03Take a final snapshot. Export open orders, open AR and AP, and on-hand inventory as of close of business. A physical count of high-value and lot-controlled items is worth the overtime.
- 04Load the deltas and reconcile again, using the same checklist.
- 05Tell customers what changes. If they ordered through entrée.NET or EXPRESS, give them their new store login and a date. Re-test EDI with each trading partner.
- 06Keep entrée read-only. People will need to look up old invoices. Ask NECS how long you can keep read-only access under your license.
Common mistakes
Treating cutover as a calendar date instead of a checkpoint.
Go live when the reconciliation passes, not because the date arrived.
Skipping order guides.
They feel like a nice-to-have until a chef can't find their usual 40 items on Monday morning.
Forgetting the accountant.
If the books move too, your accountant or controller should sign off on the opening trial balance and AR and AP balances.
Moving from entrée to Foodline AI
Foodline AI is a browser-based, AI-native ERP with B2B ecommerce built in, and it replaces both entrée and QuickBooks. The general ledger, financial statements and bill pay sit on the same record as orders, lots and the online store, so there's no entrée.QB-style posting to a second system.
The move follows the steps above. We review your entrée data and show you the plan before touching anything. Then we move items, customers, vendors, price lists, order guides, open orders, lots and history, and clean up units, pack sizes and duplicates on the way. Data migration and cutover take 3 to 4 business days on clean data, and guided implementation runs 35 or 75 days depending on scope. Migration is included in the subscription, and entrée stays available until the migrated data checks out.
For a side-by-side of the two systems, see NECS entrée vs Foodline AI. If you're also leaving QuickBooks, see the QuickBooks replacement page, and for a vendor-neutral checklist, see replacing your food distribution ERP. If you sell by weight, our catch-weight invoicing guide covers what to test.
See it on your own data: send an item export and 90 days of order history, and book a walkthrough.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to migrate from NECS entrée?
It depends on how clean your data is and how many entrée modules and integrations you use. Plan time to clean data, run at least two test loads with reconciliation, and pilot before cutover. With Foodline AI, data migration and cutover take 3 to 4 business days on clean data, and guided implementation runs 35 or 75 days depending on scope.
What data should I export from entrée?
Items (with catch-weight and lot flags), customers, vendors, price levels and customer specials, order guides and standing orders, open orders, POs, AR and AP, on-hand inventory by lot and expiry, sales history and an opening trial balance.
Can I keep my order guides and customer pricing?
Yes. Order guides, price levels, customer-specific prices and contracts should all move. Check them before go-live by comparing what the new system charges against entrée for real customers and items, and by matching order guide line counts for your top accounts.
Do I have to migrate all of my entrée history?
No. Move enough line-level sales history to rebuild order guides, compare year over year and forecast. Two years is a practical starting point. Keep older history in a read-only archive or in entrée itself.
Can credit cards saved in entrée.PAY be migrated?
Usually not as raw card numbers, because card security rules (PCI DSS) restrict exporting them. Ask your payment processor whether saved cards can move as tokens. If they can't, plan to collect cards again before cutover.
When is the best time to cut over from entrée?
At the start of an accounting month, outside your busiest week, holidays and month-end close. Cut over when the reconciliation passes, not just because a date arrives, and keep entrée available read-only for lookups.
I use entrée.QB to post to QuickBooks. What happens to QuickBooks?
Foodline AI replaces both entrée and QuickBooks. The general ledger, financial statements and bill pay move into Foodline AI, on the same record as orders and inventory. Optional QuickBooks sync can run during the transition.
See it run on your own numbers.
Thirty minutes. We load a slice of your catalogue and show you the routines firing against your real order history, not a canned demo.
Book a walkthrough