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The export was there, the file opened, the names were right. It only came to light two weeks later, when somebody asked what had been agreed last time.
A data migration rarely fails loudly. It fails quietly, because what is missing does not seem to be missing at first. Names, phone numbers and email addresses are complete, the system runs, the business carries on. Only when somebody needs a back story does it show that the back story did not come along.
That is not sloppiness, it is a question of format. A CSV export is a table, and a table can hold exactly one record per row. A person with thirty-three appointments, four notes and two uploaded documents fits in no row at all. Know that in advance and you ask the right questions — and at the start those cost nothing.
1. Four kinds of data — and only one of them is easy
For a conversation with the old and the new vendor to lead anywhere, you need the right division. Almost everything in business software falls into one of four kinds, and they differ sharply in how well they survive a move.
| Kind of data | Examples | How well it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Master records | name, address, phone, email, vehicle, child, service | almost always complete |
| Transaction records | appointments, jobs, invoices, payments, visits | often only partly, or only as a flat list |
| Free text and files | notes, internal remarks, photos, PDF attachments, signatures | frequently not at all |
| The links between them | which appointment belongs to which person, which invoice to which job | the part that disappears silently |
The fourth row is the nastiest, because it is invisible. You get a customer list and an appointment list, both complete, and afterwards no appointment hangs on the right person — the internal number that joined them lived in the old system and stayed there. Which is why the decisive question to put to an export is not “what is in it” but “how is it connected”.
So do not ask the old vendor for “an export”, ask about these four kinds separately — and have the answer in writing, because nobody reconstructs a phone call six months later.
An export without appointment history and note fields is not an export. It is an address book.
2. What the common formats can actually do
Vendors call very different things an “export”. The differences are large and easy to check, once you know what to look at.
CSV or Excel is the normal case and fine for master records. One file per kind of data. Watch for three traps. A leading plus sign or zero in a phone number vanishes the moment a spreadsheet reads the column as a number. Dates swap between day-month and month-day order, which is invisibly wrong for the first twelve days of every month. And accented characters turn into question marks when the encoding does not match.
PDF is not an export, it is a printout. For invoices you only have to archive anyway, that is exactly right. For customer data meant to be used on in the new system, it is worthless.
An interface is the best option, because the links survive. It does need somebody to operate it. Ask the new system whether it offers an import by that route — many do, and the move is then a matter of hours rather than days.
The practical check takes five minutes: open the export and look for one person whose back story you know by heart. Is everything there that you expect? That single sample finds more errors than any assurance.
3. What regularly falls by the wayside
A short list of things is missing in almost every switch. They are undramatic if you know about them and infuriating if you notice them afterwards.
- Note fields. The line “reacts badly to that product” or “always ten minutes late” is often the most valuable content in the whole database, and it appears in no standard export.
- Appointment history beyond a cut-off. Many exports deliver twelve or twenty-four months. Anything older stays behind.
- Attachments. Photos, forms, signed consents. Technically they live somewhere other than the records, which is why they are handled separately.
- Settings and templates. Your service catalogue with prices and durations, standard wordings, reminder texts, opening hours. That is work, not data — and it falls due a second time.
- Addresses pointing at you from outside. A booking link, a QR code on printed cards, a saved bookmark. They do not move with you; only a redirect or an announcement helps here.
The last point is worth thinking about in advance, especially where customers book for themselves. Some systems separate the public booking address from the software behind it — with us that is plan-it-now, so a switch in the background does not tear up the address the outside world uses. Whether your future vendor separates the two belongs before the contract.
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4. The move itself: cut-off day, parallel running, checking
A switch is not a moment, it is a period. Reckon on two to four weeks between the first export and the day you stop opening the old system.
The sequence that has proved itself has four steps:
- Trial export and trial import, well before the cut-off. Ideally during the new system's trial period. This is where you notice what is missing, and this is where it is still cheap.
- Set the cut-off day and announce it. In a quiet week if possible, and not just before a peak. From that day, new records are created only in the new system — otherwise you have two versions of the truth.
- Final export on the cut-off day, import the same day. Everything that happens in between you will have to enter by hand. Keep the gap small.
- Keep read access to the old environment for as long as you can. Not to work in, to look things up in. Most vendors leave access open for a limited time after cancellation — ask how long, and write the date down.
After the import comes a check that you actually carry out rather than merely plan. Four numbers are enough. How many people were there before, how many after? How many appointments? For five people picked at random, is the complete back story there? And for the three most recent records, is everything present? If those four come out clean, the move is as a rule clean.
5. What has to stay in the old system
“Take everything and delete the rest” is understandable, but rarely the right order. Two opposing duties meet here, and both apply at once.
The first is retention. How long you need a document is decided not by its age but by the retention period attached to that kind of record, which follows from who can still demand it: a tax authority, a warranty claim, a dispute about work you carried out. In Germany, for instance, the tax period for accounting vouchers was recently cut from ten to eight years; elsewhere the number differs, the question behind it does not. In practice, invoices and proof of payment belong in a separate, permanent filing place before you cancel — not in an account about to expire.
The second is deletion. Personal data may only be kept as long as there is a purpose for it; in the EU's GDPR that is the principle of storage limitation. Once you stop being a customer of the old vendor, they are processing your customer data without a mandate. So ask explicitly for deletion and have it confirmed — in writing, with a date. That is not mistrust, it is the evidence you yourself will need one day — as is a written rule for what gets deleted when, which the new system needs from day one.
Together the two produce a simple sequence: get out everything you have to keep, check it, cancel, then demand deletion and have it confirmed. In that order. Cancel first and you negotiate about your own export from a weaker position.
A data migration is not a technical question but a question about what you actually own. Master records almost always come across. Back story, notes and attachments come across if you ask for them — and stay behind if you do not.
Which is why the best moment for this is not the switch but the start. If you are setting up today, trigger one full export while it still costs nothing. A vendor who hands that over without fuss has told you more than any feature list — and you are right to hold our own products to that yardstick, from the salon software to every other one.
What is left after that is in the small print: notice period, format, cost and the time you still have after cancelling. That is the subject of Term, notice and data export.
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