How to move your salon to new booking software without losing your clients

What to ask your old vendor for

Ask for all of it before you give notice. Once you cancel, some vendors delete your data within weeks, and a custom export after the fact can carry a fee.

• Your client list: name, mobile, email, notes, tags and whether they agreed to marketing.
• Appointment history, so a returning client still has a record of their last colour or treatment.
• Future bookings, with date, time, service, staff member and client.
• Services, prices and durations, and your staff and their hours.
• Consent and intake forms, and any photos or treatment notes attached to clients.
• Balances you owe: gift cards, prepaid packages and any deposits you are holding.

What travels depends on the vendor and the file format. Client lists and appointment history usually come out as CSV or spreadsheet files. Forms, photos and the history of messages sent are the items most often left behind, so ask about each by name, and keep a copy somewhere that is not your old login.

Contract terms to check before you cancel

• The start date and the length of the agreement, and whether it renews on its own.
• How much notice you must give, and whether it has to be in writing or through a particular form.
• What you owe if you leave early. Some agreements charge the fees for the rest of the term.
• Any fee for exporting your data, and the date after which the vendor may delete it.
• Whether the price can change during the term, and how much warning you get.
• Whether your online booking page stops taking bookings the day you leave.

Your own order form or signed agreement is what binds you, and a vendor’s public terms can differ from it, so read both. If a term looks one-sided, the ACCC publishes guidance on unfair contract terms for small businesses, and a solicitor can tell you where you stand. This is general information, not legal advice.

How to cancel and keep proof

• Cancel only after your new system is taking bookings and your exports are safe.
• Use the method the vendor says to use. If it is a form, screenshot the confirmation with the date on it. If it is email, keep the sent message.
• Ask for the end date and the last billing date back in writing.
• Check your bank statement for the next two months and dispute any charge after the end date with the vendor first.
• Turn off the old online booking page, and test it: open your old link and try to book. Do not assume it went offline.

The order that keeps every client

• Set up the new system: services, prices, staff and hours.
• Import your clients first, then your upcoming bookings. Most importers need the client to exist before a booking can be attached to them.
• Run the import as a dry run if the new system offers one, and read the rows it refuses before you confirm.
• Move your booking link everywhere you use it: Instagram bio, Google profile, website, email signature, business cards.
• Run both systems side by side until the bookings already in the old one have passed or been re-entered. We suggest a week or two, but your own diary decides it.
• Tell clients with a booking what is changing. Their reminders will come from a new sender.
• Cancel the old system last.

We have not timed this for a typical salon and will not promise a number of days. The import is quick once the file is clean. The calendar overlap is what takes the time.

What Gaplessly imports, and what stops a row

Gaplessly’s import reads CSV, TSV, XLSX and JSON files up to 10MB and is open on every plan. It recognises the column headers that Fresha, Mindbody, Acuity, Boulevard and OpenTable exports use, and lets you correct any mapping before anything is saved. A file from another system is mapped by hand. The dry run checks the file against the real database and reports how many rows are ready, already on file or cannot be imported, with a reason per row, and writes nothing until you confirm.

Two limits are worth knowing. A client row with no phone number is refused, and a booking import needs the client to exist already, matched by email. If an import fails or too many rows are unusable, the app offers free migration help.

If you ever leave Gaplessly

Here are the same terms for us. You can cancel at any time from the dashboard with no exit fee, and the plan keeps working to the end of the period you paid for. Cancelling then moves your business to the Free plan with all its data. We email at least 30 days before a price changes.

Export first. A full export, including the client list, is available on a paid plan. On the Free plan the export covers upcoming bookings only. Closing the account is different from cancelling: it takes your booking page offline, cancels upcoming bookings and tells their guests, and deletes the workspace 30 days later unless you reopen it.