Leaving Firefish: Contract Timing and Data Migration

To leave Firefish cleanly, start by finding the minimum term and notice period in your own contract, since those set every other date. Then take a full data export while your account is still active, confirming in writing exactly what that export includes, particularly notes, attachments and activity history. Give notice inside your window, migrate to your new system while Firefish is still running so there is no gap, and verify the import with a sample check before your team switches over.

Key takeaways

• Leaving any recruitment CRM has two separate problems: the contract timing and the data migration. Solve them in that order, because the contract sets your deadline.

• Your notice period and minimum term are in your own contract rather than in any general article. Find them first and put the dates in a calendar.

• Export your data while your account is still active and in good standing, not after you have given notice.

• The records most likely to be lost are notes, attachments, email history and custom fields, because these are often excluded from a standard export.

• Verify the import into your new system with a sample of about 20 records rather than assuming it worked.

Start with four dates in your Firefish contract: term end, notice, renewal and exit costs

This is the first task, and no article can do it for you. Contract terms vary by customer, by when you signed, and by whether you took annual or monthly billing, and terms change over time. Firefish offers annual pricing alongside monthly rates, so which one you are on materially changes your options. (Source: Capterra Firefish pricing summary, checked 2026.)

Go to your signed agreement and find four things:

The minimum term. When does your current committed period actually end.

The notice period. How much written notice is required before that end date, and in what form it must be given.

The auto-renewal clause. Whether the agreement renews automatically if you do not give notice, and for how long.

Any charges on exit. Whether there is a cost associated with data export or account closure.

If any of these are unclear, ask Firefish directly and get the answer in writing. That is a reasonable request and having it documented protects you. Do this while you are still a paying customer in good standing, because that is when you have the most straightforward relationship with your account contact.

Then put two dates in a calendar with reminders: the date your notice window opens, and the last date you can give notice without triggering a renewal.

Check your contract dates before you plan the migration, not after

Agencies frequently do this the other way round. They find a new system they like, plan the migration, and only then check the contract, at which point they discover the notice window closed three weeks ago and they are committed for another year.

The contract sets the deadline. The migration fits inside it. Working in that order means you never end up either paying for two systems longer than necessary or rushing a data move to hit a date you found out about late.

There is also a practical reason to know your dates early: if your notice window is months away, you have time to do the data preparation properly rather than under pressure. That preparation is the difference between keeping your call notes and losing them.

Three ways to time your exit: wait for renewal, run an overlap, or ask for early release

Once you know your dates, there are three realistic approaches.

Option one: wait for the term to end. If your renewal is within a couple of months, the simplest path is to give notice inside the window and time your migration to land just before the term ends. You pay nothing extra and there is no overlap.

Option two: start on the new system now and accept an overlap. If you are mid-term with many months to run, waiting can cost you more than moving. In that case, ask your new vendor about a bridge rate covering the overlap months so you are not paying two full subscriptions at once. Your team gets the benefit of the new system immediately while the old contract winds down in the background.

Option three: ask about early release. Some vendors will discuss exiting early, particularly if the relationship has not worked out. It is worth asking, but do not build a plan around it until you have an answer in writing. Treat a favourable outcome as a bonus rather than an assumption.

Whichever you choose, do not cancel or lock your Firefish account before your new system is populated and checked. Your existing system is your working environment until you are satisfied the new one holds everything.

Eight things to request in your Firefish export, including consent records

Export while your account is active. Access can end when the term does, and a full export costs you nothing to keep as a safety net.

Ask Firefish in writing what a standard export includes, then request everything on this list:

• Candidate records, with names, contact details, current employer, job title, salary and availability notes

• Client and company records, with associated contacts

• Job and vacancy records, including placements

• Call notes and activity logs

• Email history, where it is held in the system rather than in a mail integration

• CVs and documents, which usually come as a separate archive

• Custom fields your team has built over the years

• Consent records and the lawful basis on which you hold each candidate's data

Request the most open format available, normally CSV for records plus a separate archive for documents. A proprietary format only the original system can read is a dependency rather than a backup.

That last item on the list matters beyond convenience. Under UK GDPR your obligations to candidates carry over when you change systems, so consent records need to travel with everything else. (Source: UK Information Commissioner's Office guidance, ico.org.uk.)

Call notes, email history, attachments and custom fields are what usually go missing

Core records almost always transfer cleanly. These four are where value quietly disappears, so concentrate your questions here.

Call notes. Often stored separately from the candidate record and omitted from a standard export unless specifically requested.

Email history. Frequently held in an integration with your mail provider rather than inside the CRM, which can mean it is not in the export at all.

Attachments. CVs and documents usually export as a separate archive that has to be relinked to records during the import. Without that step planned, they arrive as an unattached folder.

Custom fields. No automatic equivalent in a new system, so they need deliberate mapping or they vanish.

Each of these is avoidable with one question asked before the export rather than after the import.

Check 20 records by hand before your team switches over

When the import finishes, do not open the new system, see thousands of records and assume it worked.

Take a sample of about 20 records chosen deliberately: your oldest record, one with a long note history, one with attachments, a placed candidate with a linked client record, one using your custom fields, and a handful of ordinary recent records. Check the fields you rely on daily in each.

Also run a count comparison. Does the number of records in the new system roughly match your export. A large gap is worth investigating before your team builds a month of work on top of it.

Keep your original export file after the migration completes. It is your fallback if something turns out to be missing weeks later, and retaining it costs nothing.

Shortlists migrates you free within 48 hours and bridges the overlap at $40 per user

Shortlists is a recruiting CRM built for 3-to-10 seat UK agencies, and migration is included rather than sold separately.

It is free, run by the Shortlists team rather than an external migration partner, which means one point of contact and no third party handling your candidate data. The team tells you exactly what to include in your export before you start, which is the step that protects notes, attachments and custom fields. Most agencies are live within 48 hours of sending their export, and your existing system stays running throughout so there is no gap where your desk cannot work.

On the contract side, Shortlists is month to month at $120 per user a month with no annual term, so there is nothing to plan around on this end. If you are mid-contract with Firefish, you can use Shortlists at $40 per user a month until your existing contract ends, so you are not carrying two full subscriptions at once. And once you are in, your data stays exportable at no charge, so the next move is always yours rather than something held over you.

That is the principle the whole product runs on: the software carries the admin so your team keeps the work that wins placements. AI takes the admin. The craft stays with you.

Shortlists is SOC 2 compliant, GDPR-compliant and EU-hosted in Stockholm. It is used by 55+ UK recruitment agencies. (See how free migration works, the pricing page, and the Shortlists and Firefish comparison.)

Frequently asked questions

Your first three tasks: find the dates, export the data, confirm in writing

Do the contract work first. Find your minimum term, notice period and auto-renewal clause, put the dates in a calendar, and get anything unclear confirmed in writing. Then take your export while your account is active and get the itemised list of what your new vendor will bring across.

Shortlists is built for 3-to-10 seat UK agencies, and used by 55+ of them.

• Try it free for 14-days and see how your data would sit in it before committing to anything.

• Book a Demo and we will map out your migration, including timing around your current contract.

• See how free migration works, the pricing page, and the comparison pages.