How to switch booking apps without losing your clients

Lourdes runs a body treatment spa in Coyoacán: lymphatic drainage, radiofrequency, and facials, with two therapists besides herself. She’s been with another booking app for three years and has wanted to leave since summer, because her website is one thing, her calendar is another, and the link where people book her carries the app’s name before her own. What held her back was the question you ask yourself the moment you think about switching booking apps: what if Thursday’s client shows up and she’s nowhere on the books?

Switching without a plan really does cost you clients: the one who booked on the old app and arrives to a calendar that doesn’t have her, the one who’s still using the link on your Instagram, the one who gets a message from an unknown number and never opens it. All three are avoidable if you know what needs to move, and in what order.

What do you have to move when you switch booking apps?

Three things, and only one of them happens all at once. Your client list (name, phone, email, birthday, and notes) gets imported in full. The appointments you already have booked get re-entered into the new calendar. And the link where people book you gets changed everywhere you’ve published it.

The order matters: list first, then appointments, link last. If you publish the new link before moving your appointments over, your new calendar thinks Thursday at 11:00 is open, and someone’s going to book right on top of the client who already had it.

How do I move my client list to Proyecta?

Download your list from the other app as a CSV file and upload it under Schedule › Customers › “Import customers.” If you can’t find how to export it, ask their support team; if you have it in Excel or Google Sheets, you can also paste the rows in directly.

Importing clients means bringing in the list you already have all at once, instead of adding each client by hand. Proyecta guesses what’s in each column and you correct whatever’s off: Name, Last name, Phone, Email, Birthday, Note, or Do not import. It reads headers in Spanish or English (if your app gives you “First name” and “Last name,” it joins the two), understands a birthday written as “March 12” or “12/03/1990,” and strips the old 044 or 045 prefix off old phone numbers. Up to 2,000 clients fit per import; if you have more, you split the file.

Before you import, you see exactly what’s going to happen to each row. Lourdes’s list had 640 rows, and the screen told her “607 customers will be added” and “33 rows will be skipped,” each with its own reason: “no phone or email” or “repeated in the list (row 214).” The duplicates were clients entered twice under the same cell number, once as “Fati” and once as “Fátima Ruiz.” The ones with no phone or email hadn’t come in since 2023, so she left them out.

The import never overwrites what you already have. If a client was already in Customers because she’d messaged you on WhatsApp, her record just gets filled in. If you already had her on file, it won’t change her name or phone number; it’ll only add the birthday or note that was missing. And if it cuts out partway through, you upload the same list again: the ones that already went in get skipped.

Map the notes column as Note. On Lourdes’s list, that’s where you’d find what a new therapist needs to know, like “doesn’t like to chat during the session” or “light pressure on the legs.” If any client still has sessions left on a package from the old app, write that down in the same note and deduct them by hand. The import button only shows up on your owner account.

What happens to the appointments she already had booked?

Appointments don’t get imported: you move them yourself, one by one, with “New appointment” on the Calendar. Start with the nearest one and work your way to the furthest out.

Since your clients are already in Customers, typing the name prompts the calendar to ask “Is it one of your clients?” and you pick her from the list, instead of creating a duplicate. Lourdes had 46 appointments over the next three weeks and moved them all in one afternoon, with the old app open right next to the new one.

If your site is already live and the client has a phone number on file, saving the appointment sends her a WhatsApp confirmation and, a day ahead, her reminder, unless she’s told you she doesn’t want notifications. It comes from Proyecta’s notification line under your business’s name, not your cell number, so to her it’s a number she doesn’t recognize.

That’s why, before moving the appointments, Lourdes messaged all 46 from her own WhatsApp: “I switched calendars. You’re going to get a message to confirm your Thursday appointment. Same time, nothing’s changing.” That way, when the confirmation landed, nobody wondered who was writing to her.

Don’t cancel the other app yet. Keep it alive, without announcing it, until the last appointment booked there has passed, and for the first two weeks open it every night: if someone booked using the old link, move the appointment over and let her know.

Where do I need to change the link so people book me on the new one?

Everywhere the old link lives, and on the same day. The usual spots are your Instagram bio, your Google Maps profile, your WhatsApp Business profile, and your Facebook page.

Lourdes changed all four on a Sunday night. The following Tuesday, a client booked on the old app. The link came from her WhatsApp Business welcome message, which she’d written two years earlier and barely remembered. Since she was checking the old app every night, she caught it that same Tuesday, moved the appointment, and fixed the message. Check your quick replies and your highlighted stories too.

How long does switching booking apps take?

Two to four weeks start to finish, though the actual work fits into a weekend. The list imports in minutes, around fifty appointments get moved in an afternoon, and the link gets changed in an hour. What stretches the switch out is the overlap: the old app stays open until the last appointment booked on it has passed.

Before you change anything, write down where your link lives

Today, even if you haven’t decided yet, open your Instagram, your Google profile, your WhatsApp Business, and your Facebook, and jot down every place your booking app’s link shows up. With that list in hand, nothing slips through on the day you make the switch.

When you’re ready to take the leap, describe your spa at proyecta.dev with something like “a page for my body treatment spa in Coyoacán, with lymphatic drainage, radiofrequency, and facials, their duration and price, and online booking with each therapist.” Your page comes out with your calendar built in, and from Customers you import your list.