Changing salon POS is the kind of project that goes well or badly depending almost entirely on what you do in the two weeks before the switch, not on the switch itself.
Here is what actually has to move, in what order, and where it usually goes wrong.
What has to come across
The client list. Names, phone numbers, emails, and — critically — consent status for texts and email. Contact details without the consent record leave you unable to legally message people you were messaging last week.
Appointment history. What each client had, when, and with whom. This is what makes "same as last time" work, and it is the record most often lost.
Future bookings. Everything already in the diary. The highest-risk item, because an appointment that does not arrive becomes a client standing in reception with a confirmation you cannot see.
Services, durations and prices. Your real menu, not last year's.
Staff, and who can do what. Qualifications matter for booking correctly.
Gift cards and package balances. Outstanding money you owe in services. Miss these and you will either honour something twice or refuse a client something they paid for.
Sales history, for comparison. Nice rather than essential — you can keep an export.
The order that works
Two weeks out: export everything from the old system. Do this first, before anything else, and check the file opens and contains what you expect. If the export is poor, you now have two weeks to solve it rather than two days.
Clean the client list. Duplicates, dead numbers, people who came once in 2019. Migration is the one natural moment to do this and it never happens otherwise. Your list is almost certainly worse than you think — we wrote about that in your client list is full of people who don't exist.
Rebuild the menu by hand. Do not import services. It is the one thing worth typing fresh, because it is the moment you notice the durations are wrong and three services have not been sold since 2023.
Import clients and history. Then spot-check twenty records against the old system.
Enter future bookings last, and verify them twice. If the diary is large, this is the part to give real time to.
Run both for a week. The old system read-only, the new one live. When something is missing you can look rather than guess.
Where it goes wrong
Consent status is lost. The most common serious error. Contact details import fine and the marketing-consent flag does not, and now you are texting people who opted out. Check this specifically.
Future bookings silently drop. Particularly recurring appointments, and anything far out. Count them in the old system and count them in the new one.
Package and gift card balances vanish, and you find out when someone tries to redeem.
The switch happens on a Friday. Do it on your quietest morning with your most patient staff member on the desk. Never before a weekend, never in December.
Nobody tells the clients. If your booking link changes, or the confirmation texts now come from a different number, say so first. An unexpected text from an unknown number gets reported as spam, and that is a genuinely bad way to start.
What to keep from the old system
Export and keep permanently, off the old vendor's servers: the full client list, service history, sales history, and any outstanding gift-card or package balances.
Do it before you cancel. Access usually ends with the subscription, and a closed account is often unrecoverable.
The question to ask a new vendor before you commit
"What does your import take, and what does it not?"
A straight answer names formats and fields. A vague answer means you will be re-keying. Ask specifically about consent status, future bookings and package balances, because those three are what separate a tidy migration from a fortnight of repair.
Ours includes setup and migration rather than charging for it, and the honest reason is that a botched import is a customer who leaves in month two. Get in touch and ask exactly what we can take from whatever you are on now. Sonorch POS has the rest.