Switching to SlickChart from another app

Most people stay on software they have outgrown because moving looks like a weekend they do not have. It is usually an hour, and you can do it between clients.

Here is exactly what that hour involves, including the parts that do not work.

Two different things, and you probably only need one

Almost every "can I switch?" question is really two questions tangled together, and keeping them apart makes the whole thing simpler.

Getting your client list out of your old app. This works from anywhere, today. Every booking platform worth using lets you export your clients as a CSV file, and SlickChart reads that file.

A connection that keeps syncing afterwards. This exists for Square and nothing else. If you are on another platform, SlickChart will take your client list once and then leave that app alone. It will not keep talking to it, and there is no timeline for changing that.

The good news is that the second one is optional. Charting, photos, consent forms, client messaging and reminders all work on their own.

Step one: bring your client list over

1. In your current app, find Clients or Customers, then look for Export. Choose CSV.
2. Open SlickChart and go to More, then Switch apps, then Import clients.
3. Tell it which platform the file came from. SlickChart already knows the column names the major booking apps use, so your file maps itself.
4. Read the preview. It shows which column fed which field, which columns are being left behind, and how many rows it could not read and why.
5. Import.

Nothing is written until you tap the button on that preview, and you can undo a whole import for thirty days afterwards. Undo removes only the records that import created; anything you added or edited since stays put.

What comes over

Names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and whatever notes were in the file. Anyone already in SlickChart is skipped, so importing the same file twice does not give you duplicates.

What does not come over

Treatment photos. Almost no platform lets you export them, so your photo history in SlickChart starts fresh. This is the single most common surprise, and it is worth planning for rather than discovering.

Appointment history and past payments. Those stay in your old system.

This is the reason to keep your old account open for a while rather than closing it the day you switch. You are not paying for a second system forever, just long enough to stop needing to look things up.

Step two, optional: moving to Square

Square is the only platform SlickChart connects to live. Clients, appointments, your service catalog and invoices flow both ways and stay current, so the two stop being separate systems you maintain by hand.

If that is worth having to you, here is what the move actually takes.

1. Open a Square account. It is free to have. You pay per transaction rather than a monthly fee.
2. Rebuild your service menu in Square. Or skip it: connect SlickChart first and push the services you already have into Square.
3. Import your client CSV into SlickChart, then connect Square. From then on your client list and Square's customer directory stay in step.
4. If you take online bookings, turn on Square Appointments and point your booking link at it.
5. Start taking payment through Square. SlickChart can send a Square invoice or a payment link straight from a client's chart, so a card reader is optional. Plenty of providers never use one.

Do it over a couple of weeks, between clients. Nothing has to happen in a single day.

New to Square

If you do not have a Square account yet, signing up through our link gets you the processing fees waived on your first $1,000 in sales. Square sets the terms and can change or end that offer, so check the details on their page before you count on it.

What if I do not want to switch anything?

That is a completely normal way to use SlickChart, and a lot of people land there.

Keep taking bookings wherever you take them now. Bring your client list across once, and use SlickChart for the part your booking app is bad at: charting, before and afters, consent and intake forms, messaging, and giving each client their own private space to look at their own history.

Two systems that each do one thing well beats one system that half-does both.

Which platforms we know the columns for

SlickChart recognises the column names used by Square, Vagaro, Boulevard, Mindbody, Mangomint, GlossGenius, Fresha, Booksy, StyleSeat, Acuity Scheduling, PocketSuite, Jane, ClinicSense, Google Contacts and Apple Contacts. A plain spreadsheet works too, as long as the first row is your column headings.

Knowing a platform's column names is not the same as having walked its export menu ourselves. Where we have followed the export path in the live product, SlickChart shows you the exact clicks. Where we have not, it says so instead of guessing, because sending you hunting for a menu that does not exist is worse than sending you to look for the word "Export".