How to Migrate GiveWP into Paymattic

Paymattic offers a dedicated migration tool that allows you to move your entire donation ecosystem, including forms, donors, historical donations, recurring subscriptions, custom fields, and notification settings in a structured and reversible workflow.

This guide provides a detailed walkthrough of the migration interface and covers essential post-migration adjustments to prevent data discrepancy or broken payment loops.

First, go to Settings from the Paymattic sidebar menu. Click the Migrator tab from the left sidebar to open the migration interface.

Before You Start: Requirements & Safety

The migrator writes data directly into your database. To prevent incomplete migrations or data corruption, make sure your site meets the following requirements before executing the tool:

• GiveWP (Free or Pro): Must be installed and actively running on your site. Do not deactivate GiveWP until the validation report confirms a successful transfer.
• Paymattic Pro: The migration module detects and converts advanced structures (such as recurring rules, custom metadata, and currency switchers) which require an active premium license.
• Database Backup: Always run a full site/database backup or execute the initial migration on a staging copy of your website first.

Understanding Data Migration Scope

To eliminate confusion regarding exactly what maps over and what does not, review the functional breakdown below.

What Will Be Migrated Automatically

Everything in this list is handled by the migrator without any manual setup on your part.

Donation Forms

Each GiveWP donation form is recreated as a Paymattic form with its core configuration preserved form title, description, goal amount, publish/draft status, and any custom target cap you configured (e.g. "stop accepting donations after $10,000"). The Paymattic form is created in Draft status by default so you can review and publish it on your own schedule.

Donors & Role Mapping

Every donor profile in GiveWP is preserved in the migrated data. Any WordPress user who held the give_donor role is automatically given the equivalent Paymattic permissions, so they can log into the Paymattic front-end User Dashboard immediately after migration and see their full donation history without you having to touch user roles by hand.

Donations & Payment Status

All individual donation transactions are converted record-by-record with their full history intact. Statuses are mapped accurately so your books reconcile:

GiveWP Status	Paymattic Status
complete / publish	paid
pending	pending
refunded	refunded
failed	failed
abandoned / cancelled	failed

Original gateway transaction IDs, payment dates, amounts, donor name, email, and billing address all carry over.

Multi-level Donation Amounts

If your GiveWP form offered set donation tiers (e.g. $10 / $25 / $50 / Custom), all of those amount levels move over together with their layout (radio buttons, dropdown, buttons), the custom input range (minimum and maximum caps), and the donor's selected level on each historical donation.

Supported GiveWP Add-ons

The migrator has built-in extraction for the following GiveWP add-ons:

• Recurring Donations — including all standard intervals: daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly. Subscriptions and their renewal payment history are both migrated.
• Form Field Manager (FFM) — any custom fields you collected on donation forms are migrated as Paymattic form fields, with the per-donation values preserved.
• Currency Switcher — the form-level currency configuration and each donation's selected currency and amount are preserved exactly as the donor paid them.

What Will NOT Be Migrated (Out of Scope)

These items have no Paymattic equivalent or are deliberately excluded. Handle them separately before deactivating GiveWP.

• P2P Campaigns & Tributes / Memorial Donations: Paymattic has no P2P (team pages, leaderboards) or "In Memory of…" feature. Keep GiveWP active in read-only mode for reference if needed.
• Annual Receipts & Sequential Donation IDs: GiveWP-specific outputs (e.g. DON-2025-00041). Paymattic uses its own IDs and receipt templates. Export annual receipts and Gift Aid CSV from GiveWP first: it is your only HMRC / IRS record.
• Payment Gateway API Credentials: Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay, etc. secrets are not copied. Shared webhooks risk cross-plugin event collisions. Reconfigure in Paymattic → Global Settings → Payment Settings before taking new donations.

Recommended Pre-Migration Checklist

Complete these steps before running the migrator to avoid data loss or broken payment loops.

1. Back up your database. The migrator writes directly to your live tables.
2. Export Gift Aid / Annual Receipts as CSV from GiveWP → Tools → Export.
3. Note down your gateway credentials so you can paste them into Paymattic settings post-migration.
4. Install and activate Paymattic (Lite + Pro if you need recurring, currency switcher, or FFM mapping).
5. Run the Pre-flight Check — this scans your environment, counts your records, and warns you of any compatibility issues before a single row is written.

Once the pre-flight check is green, you can run the migration. After it completes, review the migrated forms (they start as drafts), confirm a few sample donations look correct, and only then deactivate GiveWP.

Step 1: Pre-flight Check

• Navigate to Paymattic Pro → Settings → Migrator.
• Click the orange Run A Pre-flight Check button.

The environment scanner will map active dependencies, calculate overall totals, and trigger system warning flags if Paymattic Pro features are needed to handle active tracking components.

• Add-on Compatibility: The migrator will automatically detect GiveWP add-ons such as Recurring Donations, Gift Aid, Form Field Manager (FFM), and Currency Switcher.
• If you are migrating Currency Switcher data or complex payment gateways, ensure Paymattic Pro is active; otherwise, these specific elements will not migrate.

IMPORTANT

If Paymattic Pro is not active, you will see a warning message. Donations from PayPal, Razorpay, Mollie, Paystack, and Square will still be migrated with the correct gateway name. However, some Pro-only features such as gateway dashboard links and advanced reports will not be available until you activate Paymattic Pro.

Step 2: Review Pre-flight Results & Options

Once the check is complete, you will see a summary of your system status and a preview of the data available for migration.

1. System Status & Environment: Confirms platform detection statuses and records local server specifications (PHP version and memory thresholds).
2. Migration Preview: Displays the exact volume numbers of found records categorized into Donations, Forms, and detected add-on modules.
3. Migration Options: If you want sandbox or staging transactions moved along with your operational database records, check the box for Include test-mode donations.
4. Click the orange Start Migration button to activate the processing wizard. You can also click Back to abandon the cycle safely.

Step 3: Validation Report

After the migration finishes, you will be presented with a Validation Report to confirm that the data was transferred successfully.

Migration Success Banner: A green confirmation banner will appear at the top stating: "Migration complete. All your GiveWP data has been moved to Paymattic. Review the summary below."

View All Forms: A dedicated orange View All Forms button is available inside the success banner to quickly let you view your newly created forms.

Migration Summary: Shows the exact status of your migrated items (e.g., 1 / 1 Forms and 5 / 7 Donations successfully moved) along with any logged Errors.

Available Actions:

• Download JSON: Click this button at the right side of the Migration Summary bar to export the full migration report as a JSON file for your records.
• Reset migration: Click this expandable section at the bottom to access system recovery tools if needed.

Crucial Post-Migration Checklist

To avoid processing drops, lost renewals, or operational downtime, perform these critical steps immediately after migration:

• Update Payment Gateway Webhooks: > CRITICAL WARNING: Your payment processors (Stripe, PayPal, etc.) are still sending events to your old GiveWP endpoint. You must log into your gateway dashboards and update the webhook URL to point to Paymattic so ongoing subscription renewals continue syncing.
• Verify Migrated Entries: Go to Entries from the top navbar or admin sidebar. Cross-reference your transaction IDs, donor records, and payment statuses against your legacy records to ensure accuracy.
• Test a Live Transaction: Run a small live donation to confirm that payment processing, email notifications, and donor dashboard access are working perfectly under the new system.

This way, you can easily migrate your entire donation ecosystem from GiveWP to Paymattic!