Moving your client list from a notebook or spreadsheet

Migrating a client list is not a file upload. It is four steps before the upload: clean, normalize the formats, remove duplicates, and only then import. Skipping the second is why reminders fail to reach half your clients after a move.

What to bring across

An old list does not make a new system better. It makes search slower and mailshots more expensive, because credits are spent on messages to dead numbers too.

The phone format decides everything

This is the main cause of silent failures. In a notebook a number is written any way at all: 067…, +38 067…, 8-067-…, with and without brackets. A messaging provider accepts one format.

Normalize every number to international form before the import, not after. Afterwards it is fixed one record at a time.

Duplicates

One person entered three times is three records with different histories and none of them complete. Find duplicates by phone number, not by name: names are spelled inconsistently, the number is one.

Keep one primary record and move the notes from the rest into it.

The order to import in

1 Reference data first, clients second

Services, resources, products and units of measure have to exist before clients and appointments do. Otherwise there is nothing for the history to attach to.

2 Clients

The import is done from a file. The warehouse section supports product-list synchronization in .xlsx, which is the fastest route for goods.

3 Outstanding memberships and certificates

These are obligations to your clients, so they are entered by hand and reconciled. An error here costs trust rather than time.

4 Check a sample

Take twenty records at random and compare them against the source. A systematic error shows up within twenty.

What not to do

• Do not migrate everything just in case. You will never come back to clean it.
• Do not import without a backup of the source. The file you imported from must stay untouched.
• Do not switch the old system off on migration day. A week of parallel running costs less than one lost booking.

Common questions

Can visit history be migrated?

Less often than people expect: contacts and outstanding balances are enough to work with. History usually stays in the old system as an archive.

What about clients with no phone number?

If there is an email, bring them: you have a channel. If there is nothing, the record has no value.

How long does it take?

The import itself takes minutes. Preparing the file takes from half a day to several, depending on how carefully the list was kept.

Can I import again?

Yes, but every re-import without deduplication creates fresh duplicates. Fix the file rather than importing over the top.