Switching from Redtail: what transfers and how

Published August 2026 · By the UltimateCRM team

The short version

Migration is not a self-service CSV wrestling match. Our team does the import with you: you get an export out of Redtail, we map it together, we load it into your workspace, and you verify real households before you cut over. Most solo and small firms complete the move in one to two weeks, working a few hours total.

What transfers

• Contacts & families. Contacts come across with names, contact details, tags, and key dates. Redtail family links become true UltimateCRM households — and every contact gets one, so nothing ends up orphaned.
• Notes & activities. Historical notes and completed activities import onto the right contact and roll up to the household, preserving dates and authorship where the export provides them.
• Tasks. Open tasks come across; recurring workflows are rebuilt as UltimateCRM task templates (usually an improvement — see below).
• Documents. Files are re-homed into each household's folder tree, so placement itself becomes meaningful (household-scoped vs. personal).
• Custom fields. Mapped case by case — into structured fields where UltimateCRM has a native home (e.g., KYC data), or tags/notes where it doesn't. We review the mapping with you before anything loads.

What rebuilds itself

Two categories of history don't need the old CRM at all, because UltimateCRM pulls them from the source systems:

• Email & calendar. Connect Microsoft 365 and your mailbox history syncs onto contacts directly from Outlook — including mail your old CRM never captured.
• Calls & texts. Connect RingCentral and the historical backfill ingests your existing call logs (roughly the trailing year, a RingCentral API limit) and text-message history, which often reaches back years. Firms are routinely surprised how much books-and-records history this recovers — even conversations that predate any archiving effort.

What changes shape

• Workflows → task templates. Redtail workflows don't import mechanically; we rebuild the ones you actually use as admin-defined task and note templates. Most firms find they carry over fewer, better ones.
• Integrations reconnect. Third-party connections (custodian feeds, dialers, planning tools) don't "transfer" — you reconnect what UltimateCRM supports and retire what the platform now covers natively.
• UDFs and one-off conventions. Anything your firm invented as a convention gets a deliberate decision: structured field, tag, or archive note.

The process, step by step

• 1. Export. Request your database export from Redtail (you own your data). We'll tell you exactly which files we need.
• 2. Mapping review. A working session (usually under an hour) to map fields, families, tags, and custom fields. You approve the mapping before load.
• 3. Trial load. We import into your workspace and you spot-check a dozen households you know cold — the fastest way to catch mapping surprises.
• 4. Connect the sources. Microsoft 365 and RingCentral go live; history backfills; passkeys get set up for each advisor.
• 5. Parallel week. Run both systems for a few days. New notes go in UltimateCRM; Redtail stays read-only as the safety net.
• 6. Cut over. Final delta import of anything added during the parallel week, then Redtail becomes an archive you keep per your retention policy.

Before you cancel the old subscription

One compliance note worth repeating: your Redtail data is part of your books and records. Keep the export (and access to it) for your full retention period — see our plain-English guide to Rules 204-2 and 17a-4. We'll store the imported history under the same retention controls as everything else.