Deltek Ajera data export: projects, time and billing history

What history does Deltek Ajera hold?#

Deltek Ajera holds the operating history of a project-based firm: projects broken into phases and activities, clients and contacts, employees and their rates, timesheets, expense reports, consultant invoices, client invoices and payments, and the general ledger behind them. Because these records share project and phase keys, together they show how work was planned, staffed and billed.

Not all of it matters equally outside accounting. For a licensing review, the project and phase structure is the backbone, timesheets show how effort actually flowed, and financial amounts are usually the first thing removed.

How do you export data from Ajera?#

Data comes out of Ajera mainly through its reports, which can typically be exported to spreadsheet formats, and, depending on how the firm runs Ajera, through access to the underlying database. Firms that run Ajera on their own servers may be able to keep a full database backup; firms in a hosted environment should ask Deltek or their administrator what extract options their agreement includes.

Work from a written export list so nothing depends on one person's memory of which reports were run.

• 1List the reports you need: project detail, timesheet detail, invoice detail, expense detail and phase budgets.
• 2Run each report across the full date range, closed projects included, at line-level detail rather than summary.
• 3Include memo, note and description fields, which some report layouts hide by default.
• 4Save exports in an open format with the run date, Ajera version and filters in the file name.
• 5Record row counts for each export and reconcile them with totals in Ajera before cutover.
• 6Keep a full database backup where available, with a note of the software version needed to read it.

What should you preserve before moving to Vantagepoint?#

Before moving to Deltek Vantagepoint, preserve everything the migration will not carry in full. Migrations commonly focus on open projects, active employees and the history needed for current reporting, so confirm with your implementation partner exactly which history moves and at what level of detail.

Closed projects, line-level timesheet notes, superseded phase structures and old billing descriptions are the usual losses. They matter for licensing because they describe completed work with known outcomes, and they matter for the firm because claims and audits can reach back to old projects.

Also confirm how long the firm keeps read access to Ajera after cutover. If access ends with the subscription, the exports become the only copy, so test that files open and totals reconcile before anything is switched off.

Mapping Ajera fields to a licensing review#

Mapping fields to a licensing review means deciding, field group by field group, what to keep, transform or drop before any record leaves the firm. Do the mapping on a copy of the exports, never on the archive copy kept for claims and audits.

Why time and billing history interests AI developers#

Time and billing history interests AI developers because it records how professional work actually unfolds: which phases ran longer than planned, how effort shifted between roles, when consultants came in and how scope changes surfaced in billing. Teams building planning and scheduling agents look for estimate-versus-actual records of this kind, because they show how plans meet reality.

Value depends on linkage. Timesheets alone are thin; timesheets tied to phase budgets, change records and the project's RFI or QA history describe a workflow. That is why Ajera history is usually assessed alongside document and project management systems rather than on its own.

How to pseudonymize staff and clients consistently#

Consistent pseudonymization replaces each employee, client or vendor with the same code everywhere it appears, so patterns survive while identities do not. A fresh random code on every row would destroy the staffing patterns that make the history useful.

Mainstream tools support this. Google's Sensitive Data Protection API, for example, offers deterministic encryption, which turns the same input into the same token, and date shifting by a random number of days. Date shifting distorts phase durations unless it is applied consistently within each project, so decide that rule deliberately.

Free-text notes need a second pass by a person. Names, nicknames and street addresses in timesheet notes rarely follow a pattern, and a role that only one person held can identify them even without a name, so small teams may need roles grouped.

Illustrative: an MEP firm retiring Ajera#

Illustrative: a fictional MEP engineering firm of about 75 people is moving from Ajera to Vantagepoint. Its implementation plan migrates open projects and summarized history, and the Ajera subscription ends shortly after cutover.

The COO has the controller export line-level timesheets, phase budgets, consultant invoices and invoice descriptions for all closed projects, reconcile row counts against Ajera totals and store the files with a version note. A separate copy for licensing review drops salaries and rates, codes clients and vendors, and replaces employees with role-based pseudonyms.

The firm then completes a metadata-only fit check on the archive alongside its Bluebeam QA records. The migration proceeds on schedule, the full history is preserved for claims and audits, and the licensing question is decided on its merits instead of disappearing with the old system.

How SourceX handles ERP history#

SourceX treats ERP history such as Ajera exports as supporting context for a firm's workflow records. In the SourceX five-step transaction, the Supply step establishes from metadata what the exports contain, Rights checks client contracts and employee notices, and Preparation removes personal and commercially sensitive fields before the firm approves anything. Ajera exports are rarely large, but any bulky archive remains on the firm's systems or moves on an encrypted drive rather than being hosted by SourceX.