Line item / hris data migration cost

HRIS data migration cost

Data migration off a previous HRIS typically runs $0-$8,000 for sub-150 employee deployments. Most modern HRIS vendors include a basic CSV importer at no charge; complex migrations with historical payroll data, custom fields, and benefits enrolment history push the cost band. The parallel-payroll period (2-3 cycles) is the hidden cost, not the migration line itself.

Typical migration costs by source vendor

From	To	Typical fee	Timeline
Gusto	BambooHR	$0-$1,500	4-6 weeks
Gusto	Rippling	$2,000-$5,000	6-10 weeks
Justworks (PEO)	Gusto	$0-$2,500	6-8 weeks (PEO exit)
Justworks (PEO)	BambooHR + broker	$1,500-$5,000	8-12 weeks
BambooHR	HiBob	$2,000-$6,000	6-10 weeks
BambooHR	Rippling	$2,500-$6,000	6-10 weeks
ADP Workforce Now	Paylocity	$5,000-$15,000	10-16 weeks

Fields that break

Historical PTO accruals, custom benefits enrolment dates, equity grant dates, employment-status transitions, and historical compensation change dates are the five fields that most often break in a migration. Each one carries a 2-8 hour internal People-Ops rework cost per affected employee. Plan for 10-20% of records to need manual touch-up.

Bundled vs separate billing

Rippling, BambooHR, and Gusto bundle basic CSV imports into implementation. Paylocity, Paycom, ADP, Workday, and UKG bill data migration as a separate line. Multi-vendor migrations (HRIS + Payroll + ATS) carry the highest unbundled fees.

Clean 100-employee migration timeline

6-10 weeks end-to-end including discovery, data export, transformation, dry-run, parallel-payroll, and cutover. The internal People-Ops time investment is typically 60-120 hours, dominated by data clean-up and parallel-payroll verification rather than the cutover itself.

Parallel-payroll period cost

2-3 pay cycles of parallel running. The cost is double payroll-processing fees during the period (one to each vendor) plus internal payroll-team hours. For a bi-weekly payroll cycle, plan on $2,000-$5,000 of double-billed payroll-run fees plus 20-30 hours of payroll-team verification.