Migrate from Bigin by Zoho to Thawly

Move your lost deals from Bigin to Thawly in 10 minutes. Bigin is Zoho's small-business CRM — a deliberately stripped-back alternative to full Zoho CRM. Its export workflow reflects that: a saved filter on the Deals module plus a one-click CSV download.

What you need#

• A Bigin user with Export Deals permission. Bigin has a flat permission model on its Free, Express and Premier plans — every user can typically export their own deals; admins can export everyone's. If you can see the Export option under the More Actions menu, you're set.
• A modern browser. No Bigin API token.
• About 10 minutes.

If you're on a multi-user plan and your admin has restricted export, ask them to enable Export for your profile under Settings → Users & Control → Profiles.

Step-by-step extraction#

1. Log in to Bigin at bigin.com (or your regional URL — bigin.zoho.eu for the EU data centre, bigin.zoho.in for India). Match the data centre your account lives in.
2. From the top nav, click Deals. [Screenshot: Bigin top nav with Deals selected]
3. In the saved-views dropdown (top-left of the list), choose + Create View. Build the view with these criteria:
   • Stage → is → Closed Lost (or your custom lost-stage names — Bigin lets admins customise these per pipeline).
   • Pipeline → is → your sales pipeline.
   • Optionally Closing Date → last → 3 years.
4. Add the columns you need to the view. Bigin's column-picker is straightforward: tick at minimum Deal Name, Account Name, Amount, Closing Date, Stage, Lost Reason (or your custom field), Description.
5. Save the view as Lost deals for Thawly. [Screenshot: Bigin custom view editor with criteria and columns]
6. With the filtered list visible, click the ⋯ (More Actions) menu top-right of the deals list and choose Export Deals.
7. In the export dialogue, pick Selected View: Lost deals for Thawly and choose CSV as the format.
8. Click Export. Bigin generates the file and emails you a download link. For smaller exports, the file downloads directly to your browser.
9. Open the CSV in Excel or Google Sheets to sanity-check the row count before uploading.

Field mapping#

Thawly's importer auto-maps any reasonable header. For reference:

• Account Name → name (used for Companies House matching)
• Amount → deal_value (GBP — see currency note below)
• Closing Date → lost_date
• Lost Reason (or custom equivalent) → lost_reason
• Custom Competitor field → lost_to
• Description + custom long-text note fields → notes

If your Bigin setup doesn't use Account Name consistently and your team puts the company straight into Deal Name (e.g. Pendle Civils Ltd — Q3 expansion), Thawly will use Deal Name and run Companies House matching on it. Either column works.

What to do with the Notes column#

Don't pre-clean. Bigin stores notes against deals in the Description field plus a separate Notes related list. Paste the raw Description straight in. Thawly's AI summarises long activity logs and extracts structured signals (objection type, decision-maker title, competitor name, budget threshold) on its own.

Bigin is deliberately lightweight — its Notes are usually shorter and less structured than full Zoho CRM's. That's fine; Thawly's AI works just as well on terse notes ("budget pulled, recheck Q2") as on long call summaries.

Common gotchas#

• Duplicate companies. Bigin allows multiple deals against the same Account (Linton Manufacturing Ltd lost twice in 2024). Thawly de-duplicates on lower-cased company name on import, so duplicates in the CSV are safe.
• Currency mismatches. Bigin's Multi-currency is a paid add-on — many small-business accounts run on a single currency (whatever was set up at sign-up). If you've enabled multi-currency, the Amount column shows each deal's currency; filter to Currency = GBP before exporting.
• Multi-pipeline issues. Bigin's pipelines are layered — a deal lives in one pipeline, and lost-stage names can be customised per pipeline. Filter your view on the right pipeline before exporting; pulling renewals or partner "lost" rows skews the data.
• Stale "won" or "open" deals. Bigin lets admins set custom stage names like Closed Lost (recoverable) or Lost — competitor pricing. Use a stage filter that lists every "lost" stage explicitly rather than Stage contains lost — that approach can catch unintended stages.
• Migrating from full Zoho CRM to Bigin (or vice versa). If your team has used both, the data models differ. Bigin's Account-Deal relationship is simpler than Zoho CRM's Account-Contact-Deal triangle. Thawly only needs the company name and lost-deal info, so either export works — pick the one that's currently your source of truth.

What happens next#

Drop the CSV at thawly.co.uk/upload. We auto-map the columns, run a Companies House lookup on every Account name and show you a per-row preview before importing.

After import, monitoring runs on the next signal-source pass. Your first digest only lands when there's a real signal — see Reading your digest.

Coming from a different CRM?#

• Migrate from Zoho CRM — if your team is on full Zoho CRM rather than Bigin.
• Migrate from Capsule CRM — similar lightweight CRM with a comparable export workflow.
• Migrate from a spreadsheet — if you've already cleaned the data in Excel.

For the bigger picture, read Dead deal recovery and Buying signals in B2B sales.