Moving your clinic off paper and Excel without losing your history
A step-by-step plan for switching to a practice system: what to bring across, what to leave behind, how to clean a client list, and how to run cut-over week without chaos.
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Most clinics that move to a practice system are not moving from nothing. They have years of history in card files, appointment diaries, spreadsheets, WhatsApp chats and the memory of a long-serving receptionist. The fear of losing that history is the main reason clinics put off switching for years.
It does not have to be an all-or-nothing leap. With a little planning, you can move the information you use every day, keep the rest safely accessible, and be fully running on the new system within a week or two.
Decide what actually matters
Before exporting anything, sit down with the people who use the records and sort your data into three groups:
- Must move: client names and phone numbers, pets and their species, upcoming appointments, next vaccine due dates, outstanding balances and important alerts (allergies, aggression, chronic conditions).
- Nice to have: past visit notes, old invoices, previous weights.
- Leave behind: clients who have not visited in many years, duplicate records, test entries and anything you would never look at again.
Be honest about the second group. A detailed visit note from six years ago is rarely opened. A scan of the paper record, attached to the patient, is usually enough for the rare occasion someone needs it.
Clean before you move
Moving is the best chance you will get to tidy up. It is far easier to clean a spreadsheet than to fix records one by one later. Spend an afternoon on these:
- Merge duplicates. The same owner often appears twice with slightly different spellings. Sort by phone number to find them.
- Standardise phone numbers. Use one format with the country code, such as +92 300 1234567. This matters for WhatsApp reminders later.
- Split names. First name and last name in separate columns make searching and personalised messages easier.
- Remove notes that are really alerts. “BITES” in a notes column should become an alert on the pet, where everyone will see it.
The client list
Clients are the backbone of everything else, so they go first. In Vetlyn, owners and admins can import clients from a CSV file under Settings → Data → Import clients from CSV. The importer understands these columns:
| Column | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
first_name | Yes | If you only have a full name and no last_name column, the importer splits it at the first space. |
last_name | No | Surname. |
phone | No | Used to skip clients already on file. |
email | No | Also used to skip duplicates. |
address | No | Free text. |
notes | No | Anything staff should know. |
Common alternative headings such as “Mobile”, “WhatsApp”, “Surname” or “Comments” are recognised too. You see a preview of the first rows before anything is saved, and clients whose phone or email is already in Vetlyn are skipped, so importing the same file twice is safe. Exporting from Excel? Use File → Save As → CSV UTF-8 so names in Urdu, Arabic or with accents survive the trip. Full details are in our CSV import guide.
Patients and history
Pets need to be linked to the right owner, which makes them harder to import blindly. There are three sensible approaches, depending on how many patients you have:
- Add as they come in. For smaller clinics, adding each pet the first time it visits after the switch takes a minute, and you naturally check the details with the owner.
- Prioritise the active ones. Add patients with vaccines due in the next few months first, with their next due dates, so reminders work from day one.
- Ask us. If you have a large patient list or an export from another system, send it to us. We review it with you, map the columns and help bring patients and key history across. See our data migration page for what we can do today.
For older history, scan the paper record or export it as a PDF and upload it to the patient's Files tab. Files up to 25 MB each are supported, including images and PDFs. It is not searchable like a structured note, but it is one click away when you need it.
Cut-over week
The most stressful part of switching is the overlap. A clear plan keeps it short:
- A week before: set up your clinic details, opening hours, tax and invoice prefix. Add your price list of services and your main products with opening stock. Invite the team.
- A few days before: import clients. Enter upcoming appointments for the first two weeks into the new calendar.
- Practice day: run a pretend clinic morning with fake patients. Book, check in, write notes, bill and print a receipt. Everyone should do each step once.
- Go-live day: all new bookings, visits and bills go into Vetlyn. No exceptions, even when it is busy. Keep the old diary on the desk, closed, for reference only.
- End of week one: review what was awkward and adjust: slot lengths, service names, who does what at check-in.
The rule that makes this work is the fourth one. Running two systems in parallel for weeks sounds safe, but it doubles the work and guarantees that the two drift apart.
What to do with the old records
Do not throw anything away on day one. Many countries have rules about how long clinical records must be kept, so check what applies to you. Keep the paper files or the old spreadsheet in a safe, read-only place for as long as you need them. After six months, most clinics find they almost never look at them.
And remember that your data in Vetlyn is yours. Owners and admins can export clients, patients, visits, vaccinations, invoices and more as CSV files, or download a full JSON backup, at any time from Settings → Data. Moving in should never mean being locked in.