Moving your client base from Altegio in an evening — with an undo
Most salons do not stay on software they dislike because of the price or the features. They stay because of the client history they are afraid to lose.
We built the import around that fear. Nothing is written until you have seen what will happen, and a whole import can be taken back. This is how it goes.
1. Export your clients from Altegio
Altegio exports clients to a spreadsheet. Take the file as it comes and do not tidy it by hand: the import finds duplicates by phone and by email more reliably than an evening with a spreadsheet does. The same steps work for a YCLIENTS export.
2. Upload it and read the preview
The first thing you get is not a result but a preview: how many rows are new, how many you already have, and which have a problem and why. Choose Altegio / YCLIENTS under “Coming from” and the import knows their column names. Names, phones, emails, companies and job titles come across; a column the import does not use is shown to you and left out, so nothing arrives that you have not seen.
A column with an unusual name you match by hand. A file that cannot go in yet is still shown as a file, with the reason, rather than as an error that fills the screen.
3. Decide what happens to clients you already have
A client already in Setvos — the same phone or the same email — is skipped or updated, and you choose before anything is written. Updating writes what the file holds over what you have; a cell the file leaves empty never erases a value you already have.
4. Import, and undo it if something looks wrong
Every import is a batch in the import history, and Undo removes everything that batch created. One honest warning: updates are not reversed, because the value an update replaced is not kept, and pretending otherwise would be a lie.
Choose “Leave them alone” the first time. You can always run the same file again with “Update them from the file”.
Visit history, and the bookings still ahead
Past visits come across as a record of what happened, without the checks a new booking gets — two stylists in one chair in 2019 is simply what happened. A visit dated in the future is refused: a booking that never went through the rota could double-book a person or a chair. Enter those in the diary, where each one is checked.
Where the evening goes
The import itself is quick. The evening goes on reading the result: the clients with no phone, and the few duplicates worth merging by hand — the Find duplicates button on the clients list is there for that. Keep Altegio open until the last booking made there has passed.
Help with the move is included on every licence. If a file will not go in, press “Send this file to us” on the import screen, and we will come back to you with it. The step-by-step guide “Moving from Altegio or YCLIENTS without losing a client” covers services, staff and visit history as well.