If your Extensiv Order Manager contract is not going to be renewed, the date on that contract is your real deadline, whatever anyone announces later. This page is the plan I would follow to get off it cleanly: what to export while you still have full access, the order to load it into the next system, and the three places these migrations actually go wrong.
I sell one of the systems you might move to, so read it knowing that. Most of it applies whichever system you pick. Where something is specific to SKU.io I say so. I have done this migration myself: in January 2026 I moved a bar-tools brand off Extensiv, and the honest version of how that went is on the Skubana alternatives page. For what is known about Order Manager’s future, read Extensiv Order Manager end of life: what we know first.
Written 6 November 2026. SKU.io import behaviour is from our own user documentation, linked inline.
Step 0: find your real deadline
Before you export anything, get three dates in writing from your Extensiv account manager:
- Your contract end date. If Order Manager is not being renewed, this is the day your access ends unless they say otherwise.
- The date you lose write access, and the date you lose read access. Vendors that wind a product down often leave a read-only window for exports afterwards. Shopify did that when it retired Stocky. Do not assume you get one. Ask.
- Whether you can leave early. If you are moving anyway, a contract with eight months left is money spent on software you are trying to stop using. At least one Order Manager customer I have spoken to is asking to be released early, and the worst answer you can get is no.
Then work backwards. A multichannel brand with bundles and a 3PL should plan on four to eight weeks from first export to the day Order Manager stops routing orders, plus a buffer. The data is not the slow part. Decisions are, as you’ll see in Step 2.
Step 1: export everything while you still have full access
Pull these out of Order Manager now, even if you are months from choosing a replacement. A file you exported in November is worth more than a promise of access in June.
| Export | Why you need it | Easy to miss |
|---|---|---|
| Products: SKU, name, barcode, cost, weight and dimensions, every channel listing ID | The spine of every other import | Duplicate SKUs that both have stock behind them |
| Bundles and kits with their components and quantities | Orders for a bundle only deplete the parts if the bundle exists first | Bundles that were changed over time; you need today's recipe |
| Vendors with lead times and vendor SKUs and costs | Purchasing and reorder suggestions depend on them | Vendor SKUs that differ from your own |
| Open purchase orders, line by line, with what has already been received | Stock that is on the water still has to arrive somewhere | Partly received POs; only the remainder should move |
| Stock on hand by warehouse, as of a named date | Your opening balance in the new system | Units sitting unassigned to any warehouse |
| Order history for at least the last 12 months | Forecasting, reorder points, returns, chargebacks | Returns and refunds that arrive after you switch |
| Customers, if you sell wholesale | Price levels, terms, addresses | Customer-specific pricing that lives in notes |
If the screens won’t give you a file, the Order Manager API documentation is public at developer.extensiv.com, so whatever the screens won’t hand you can be pulled through it. That is one thing Skubana got right years ago, and it is the difference between a migration and a re-keying project.
Keep the raw exports untouched in one folder and work on copies. You will want the originals the first time two numbers disagree.
Step 2: clean the catalog before you load it
This is the step every migration underestimates, and it was the expensive one in January. The bar-tools brand had duplicate SKUs with real stock behind both records. No import tool can decide which record survives and where the stock consolidates. Somebody who knows the products has to sit down and decide, SKU by SKU, and in their case that took several sessions.
Do it in the spreadsheet, before anything is imported:
- Pick one SKU per physical product. Map every duplicate to the survivor and add the two stock figures together.
- Check every channel listing maps to exactly one SKU. A listing that points at the wrong record will sell stock you don’t have.
- Confirm your 3PL uses the same SKUs. The weekly loop on the Skubana page, an error in Extensiv, an email to the 3PL, a manual re-push, was a SKU that existed on one side and not the other. Fix that during the migration and it stays fixed.
Step 3: load in this order
The order matters more than any single screen. Get it wrong and you spend the first month correcting orders by hand. This is the sequence in SKU.io; most serious systems want something close to it.
- Products. Seed from your strongest source, usually the channel with the most complete listings, or from the cleaned Order Manager export. In SKU.io that is the product import, with every column described in the importable columns reference.
- Bundles and kits, before a single order. A bundle only expands into its components if the system knows it is a bundle when the order arrives. Import orders first and they land as the bundle SKU, your component stock never moves, and you fix it by hand. The bundles and kits guide covers the rules.
- Suppliers, with lead times and costs, through the supplier import.
- Warehouses and your 3PL connection, so stock has somewhere to live and orders have somewhere to go.
- Opening stock, counted per warehouse on one named date. In SKU.io the opening balance is a stock take, so the first number in the ledger is a count with a date on it rather than a figure typed into a field.
- Open purchase orders, only the unreceived remainder, through the purchase order import. They arrive as drafts, so you can check each one before it is live.
- Customers for wholesale, through the customer import.
- Sales channels last. Connect Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop and the rest once everything they will reference already exists.
SKU.io does not have a one-click Order Manager importer. Your data comes across through those imports and the Order Manager API. I would rather tell you that now than have you find out in week two.
Step 4: run both systems for a short overlap, then cut over
Pick a cutover day early in a week and outside a promotion. For a few days before it, let the new system import orders without fulfilling them, and compare order counts and stock movements against Order Manager every morning. When they agree for several days running, switch fulfillment over, turn Order Manager’s channel connections off, and record the stock on hand in both systems at that moment.
Two things to watch in the first fortnight:
- Returns of orders placed before the cutover. Decide in advance which system receives them.
- Stock with no warehouse. The baby-products team on the Skubana page described units “in limbo”, assigned to no warehouse. Any of those that survived the export need a home on day one, or the oversell comes with you.
What it costs to do this
The software is the cheap part. The real cost is the time of whoever knows your catalog best, for several sessions in Step 2, and a few weeks of someone watching two systems in Step 4. If a vendor quotes you a clean two-week cutover with no work on your side, ask them what they do about duplicate SKUs.
If SKU.io is on your list: pricing starts around $1,000 a month and scales with orders and SKUs, there are no onboarding fees, and the demo is given by me. If you are a single-channel seller under about $1M, you probably don’t need a system this size. The Skubana alternatives page has the honest table of who fits where, and what Finale looks like now covers the replacement Extensiv’s own reps are reported to be suggesting.
Frequently asked questions
Can I export my data from Extensiv Order Manager? Yes. Export what the screens allow, and for anything they don’t, Order Manager’s API documentation is public at developer.extensiv.com. Do it before your contract end date rather than after, and keep the raw files.
How long does a migration off Skubana take? For a multichannel brand with bundles and a 3PL, plan on four to eight weeks from the first export to cutover. Cleaning duplicate SKUs and deciding where their stock consolidates is usually the slowest part.
Should I import order history? Bring at least twelve months of it, for forecasting and for returns of orders placed before the switch. Import bundles and kits first, or historical bundle orders won’t map to their components.
Does SKU.io have an Extensiv Order Manager importer? No. There is no one-click importer. Data comes across through SKU.io’s product, supplier, purchase order and customer imports and the Order Manager API.