GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Running a Garage Door Business

Switching Software Without Losing Your Customer List: CSV Import for a Garage Door Company

Your customer list is one of the most valuable things your garage door company owns. Every name on it is someone who called you once and might call again. The biggest fear about switching software is losing that list, or ending up with a mess of duplicates and missing addresses. With a little preparation, moving it is a calm afternoon job.

Where Your List Lives Now

Moving off paper, covered in Moving a Garage Door Business Off Paper Tickets and the Whiteboard, starts with the customer list. So does moving from another program.

Most small companies have their customers in one of a few places: a spreadsheet, an accounting program, a phone's contacts, or another field-service program. Almost all of these can export a CSV file, a plain spreadsheet with one row per customer and one column per detail. That file is what you bring across.

Clean the List Before You Import

A few minutes of cleanup in the spreadsheet saves hours later. Before importing:

• Remove obvious duplicates. The same customer entered twice with slightly different spellings.
• Split names and addresses into columns if they are crammed into one: first name, last name, street, city, state or province, ZIP or postal code.
• Check phone numbers and emails. These drive the automatic texts and emails, so they need to be right.
• Note multi-address clients. A landlord with several rentals or a property manager should end up as one client with many addresses, not separate customers.
• Decide on tags you want to carry over, such as plan customers, builders and commercial accounts.

Import and Watch the Map Fill In

GarageDoorBossPro takes your customer list by CSV import. Run the import with your cleaned-up file, and the clients and addresses come in. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically, so the office map and the Waiting List show where your customers are right away.

Spot-check a handful of customers after import. Is the address right? Did the phone number come through? Fix any patterns in the spreadsheet and you are done.

Add What a Spreadsheet Cannot Hold

Your old list probably does not have the details that make GarageDoorBossPro useful day to day. Add them over time:

• Door and hardware on each house. Door, opener, springs, cables and drums, keypad, remotes and sensors, with brand, model, size, material and year installed. Techs can add these as they visit.
• Access notes. Gate codes, dogs, lockboxes.
• Measurements. Square feet, number of doors and openers, so services can be priced off them.
• Tune-up plans. Recurring work every 365 days for yearly plan customers.
• Monthly billing for property managers, HOAs and commercial accounts.

Plan the Switch Date

Pick a date to switch, ideally in a quieter week. Before that date, set up your service list and prices, add employees with PINs and van assignments, and put upcoming jobs on the dispatch board. On the switch date, techs start using the tech app, and the office stops using the old system for new work.

Walk each tech through the app on a ride-along before the switch date, so their first morning on the new system is not their first look at it. Keep the old program or spreadsheet available read-only for a while, in case you need to look something up. But do not keep adding to it. Two live systems is how customers get lost.

Tell Customers What Changes

Customers will notice a few things: automatic reminders and on-the-way texts, invoices by email, and the customer app where they can see invoices, pay, update their card, request service and sign up for a tune-up plan. A short message introducing the change helps. Most customers welcome the texts once they get the first one.

Bring Plan Customers Over Carefully

Tune-up plan customers are the ones you most need to get right, because they expect you to remember them. After the import, tag them, add the plan as recurring work, and check that each one has a sensible next visit on the Waiting List. Building that plan list up over time is covered in Building Tune-Up Plan Revenue in a Garage Door Business. A plan customer who gets their reminder on time after the switch never notices anything changed.

Try It Before You Commit

Before importing anything, click around the live demo, a fully stocked sample garage door company you can explore without signing up. Then start a 14-day free trial with no credit card and import a test file of a few customers to see how it looks. Choosing software in general is the last guide in this series. For how imported customers fit into the rest of the system, see the GarageDoorBossPro garage door business software page.