A contact spreadsheet can leave out the history a brokerage needs. Follow Up Boss, for example, excludes email messages and call recordings from exports; its export guide says emails remain in the connected mailbox.

For brokerage operations managers and agent teams, a real estate CRM export checklist should establish which records must remain usable before the old account closes. The product examples below draw on vendor documentation showing update dates before August 2, 2026. No hands-on migration testing was performed.

1. Confirm export authority and exit terms

• Name the authorized exporter. Follow Up Boss’s account owner controls export permission. Owners and admins can view all leads, while agents have narrower access, according to its roles and permissions guide. Confirm that the person handling the export can reach every intended record.
• Define which records may move and the cost of leaving. Check brokerage and team agreements. Obtain written confirmation of cancellation notice, the final access date, retention and deletion timing, export assistance charges and any read-only option. Budget for overlapping subscriptions and manual retrieval.

2. Check export fields and history limits

The export option determines how much contact information leaves. Follow Up Boss’s export guide, updated April 21, 2026, documents these fields and limits:

• Save the original export and its settings. Record filters, selected contacts, columns and export time. Identify contacts whose history or relationships exceed the documented limits. Arrange to preserve any required records the export omits.

3. Retrieve files and reconcile transactions separately

Follow Up Boss documents individual file downloads and supports files or links attached to leads and deals. That guide does not establish that attachments can be exported in bulk.

• Build a file inventory. Record each required document’s associated contact or deal, filename and storage location. Download the files and open samples outside the CRM. Distinguish stored attachments from links to another service. Check the connected mailbox separately for required messages and their attachments.
• Reconcile transactions. Follow Up Boss supports a separate Deals Report export, whose report columns include associated people and team members. Capture the relevant pipelines, statuses and columns, then verify how the destination will reconnect contacts to transactions. The report provides a reference for reconciliation; it does not demonstrate that an importer can rebuild those links.

4. Verify what the destination can reconstruct

Export and import capabilities differ even within one product. Follow Up Boss’s import guide, updated July 8, 2025, lists tasks, appointments and deals as unsupported by its contact importer.

• Request a field map and sample import. Ask the receiving provider whether activity becomes dated events with authors, searchable text or a combined note. Include an active contact with a long history, a household with several relationships and a client with multiple transactions.
• Check usability and access. Compare the oldest and newest required events, assignments, custom fields and transaction links. Test ordinary agent accounts as well as the administrator account. Decide which records must work inside the new CRM and which may remain in a searchable archive.

5. Preserve sending restrictions and consent evidence

Follow Up Boss marks unsubscribed email addresses and adds an unsubscribed tag to the contact. A transferred tag alone does not prove that the destination will block sending.

• Map restrictions before enabling campaigns. Preserve the affected email address or phone number, channel, request date and scope, plus original consent evidence where recorded. Keep uncertain records out of campaigns. Verify suppression through a preview or controlled test using addresses your team owns.

The FTC’s business guidance requires commercial-email opt-outs to be honored within 10 business days and opt-out mechanisms to work for at least 30 days after sending. Confirm how unsubscribe links in previously sent emails will keep working through cancellation.

Refer disputed ownership, retention duties or consent questions to counsel.

6. Require evidence before canceling

Matching contact totals is a starting point. Use these acceptance requirements when comparing real estate software and checking the final transfer:

• Reconcile source totals against imported, merged, excluded and rejected records; explain every difference.
• Confirm that required history and files are readable, transaction links work and access permissions are correct.
• Capture changes since the trial export, including new opt-outs, before the final transfer.
• Have the brokerage’s designated owner accept the results and record where archives will live and who will maintain them.

Delay cancellation while required records remain accessible only in the old account or unsubscribe handling remains unverified.