Switching
You've done this once already. Bringing your customers over takes ten minutes.
Nobody in this trade is coming off paper. You're on something — and so are your lads, who took a while to come round to it and won't thank you for a second go. So you export your customers from what you've got, drop the file in, and they're there. Instructions for each one are below.
How it goes
There's no template to fill in and no columns to rename. Whatever your current system spits out is what you upload.
Export your customers
Every one of them can do it, though some bury it. The exact clicks for the common ones are further down this page.
Drop the file into Guv
CSV or Excel, whatever came out. You don't need to tidy it, rename the columns, or delete the rows that aren't customers. Files with the headings three rows down and a TOTAL at the bottom are normal and it copes.
It works out which column is which
Account code, customer, the person to ring. Where one customer is spread over three rows — one per contact, which is how a lot of systems export — it makes one customer with three contacts rather than three customers. You get shown what it decided, and you can change any of it.
You see exactly what it'll do, before it does anything
How many are new, how many matched someone already there and what would change on them, how many rows couldn't be read and why. Nothing is saved until you press the button.
Next time it doesn't ask
It remembers the layout, so the same export next month goes straight to the summary.
Getting your customers out — where the button is
The clicks, so you don't have to go hunting. Their own instructions are linked where they publish them.
| If you're on… | Do this |
|---|---|
| ServiceM8 | Settings → ServiceM8 Add-ons → turn on the Advanced Reporting Pack, which adds a Client List export. Worth knowing before you start: the full client export is part of that paid add-on, so getting your own list out may cost you a month of it. Not our doing, and better said now than on the day. — their guide Their export is one row per contact, so a customer with a jobs contact and a billing contact comes out twice. Guv merges those back into one customer with two contacts. |
| Jobber | Clients → More Actions → Export Clients → choose CSV. You can filter by tag first if you only want some of them. — their guide |
| Tradify | Customers → Options → Export Customers to File → Download. — their guide |
| Xero | Contacts → All contacts → Export. Often the better list anyway — it's the one that's kept up to date, because it's the one you invoice from. — their guide |
| QuickBooks or Sage | Both export a customer list to CSV from the customers screen — the wording moves around between versions, so search their help for "export customers". Same as Xero: the accounts file is usually the most accurate customer list a business has. |
| A spreadsheet | Send it as it is. Most firms' real customer list is one of these, kept by one person, with the headings in the wrong place and a few rows that aren't customers. That's the normal case, not the awkward one. |
| Something else | Almost certainly fine — it doesn't need to be a system we've heard of, only a file with your customers in it. If it won't read, send it over and we'll sort it rather than leaving you to. |
And getting back out again.
You can export everything you hold, whenever you like, with no add-on to buy — which is more than the one you're leaving offers. We'd rather you could go easily than feel stuck. A business that keeps customers by hiding the door isn't one worth being in.
And about your lads
The honest reason most switches fail isn't the data — it's the crew. They came round to the last app grudgingly and they're not interested in learning another. So the worker's side of Guv is four screens: today's jobs, the job, the photos, the signature. There's nothing else on it to find, and it doesn't track where they are — which, in our experience, is the first thing they ask.
Stuck on the export?
Send us the file, or the screenshot of the screen you're stuck on, and we'll get you through it. You won't be the first.
hello@guvguvguv.com