People who search for simplybooking are usually running service bookings in a standalone tool and wondering whether it still fits as the firm grows. This article does not review or compare that product. It answers the question that follows: what to check before moving off any standalone booking tool, and how to migrate your services, staff availability and future appointments onto the levelpartner.ai platform without dropping a single booked client in the switch.
Why firms move off a standalone booking tool
A standalone booking tool does its job well when booking is the whole process. As a firm grows past ten or twenty people, booking becomes one step in a longer chain: the enquiry, the follow-up, the meeting, the proposal, the invoice, the review request. A separate tool holds one link of that chain and nothing else.
The symptoms are familiar. Contacts are typed into the CRM twice. Reports on bookings never match reports on revenue. Reminder messages sound different from every other message the client gets. And nobody can say which advert produced which booking.
What to check before you decide
Moving is not always right. Check these honestly first.
- Does your booking data need to reach your CRM, pipeline and invoicing, or is booking really the whole job?
- How many future appointments are already booked, and how far ahead do they run?
- Which services, durations and staff assignments does the current tool hold?
- Are clients used to a particular booking link, and where is it published?
- Does anything else depend on the current tool, such as a website plugin or a payment step?
- Who will own booking on the new system after the move?
If booking really is the whole job and nothing needs to flow onward, staying put may be the sensible choice.
Before you start
- An export of your current services, durations and prices from the existing tool.
- An export of client contact details, checked for duplicates.
- A list of all future appointments with date, time, staff member and client.
- Every staff member's working hours.
- A list of every place the old booking link appears: website, emails, social profiles, printed material.
How to set it up
- Go to Contacts and click Import Contacts.
- Upload the client export as a CSV and map each column.
- Go to Calendars, then Calendar Settings, and click + New Calendar.
- Create one calendar per service, matching duration and notice period.
- Select the staff who deliver each service as team members.
- Ask each staff member to open Connections and click Add New.
- Recreate future bookings from the old tool against the right contacts.
- Go to Automation, click Create Workflow and select Recipe.
- Choose Appointment Confirmation + Reminder and update the meeting link.
- Click Save Action, then Publish, then Save.
- Click Share, then Copy Link, and replace every old booking link.
- Stop new bookings in the old tool from a fixed date.
- Close the old account once the last old appointment has passed.
Step 12 is what keeps the move safe. You never cancel or rebook a client's existing appointment just to tidy the data. Old bookings finish in the old tool; new bookings start in the new one.
Choosing a cut-over date
Pick a quiet week, not the start of your busiest season. Announce the change to staff a week ahead. Clients do not need an announcement: their existing bookings are honoured, and new bookings simply use the new link.
Suppose the firm has six services, five staff and 70 future appointments booked up to eight weeks ahead. It could recreate the six services as calendars in an afternoon, switch every booking link on one Monday, and keep the old tool open for eight more weeks so existing bookings run their course there. From that Monday, every new booking would sit on a contact with an owner and a pipeline stage, and the old tool would empty by itself.
What changes for your team
Staff stop working from two diaries. Every new booking appears on the contact with its history, so an adviser can see the original enquiry, earlier meetings and any open proposal before the call. Reminders, follow-ups and review requests come from the same system and sound the same.
For setting the availability rules on each new calendar, read the slot rules behind a booking calendar. If your services include sessions in a room with limited places, see booking spaces and seats for client sessions. For checking the move is paying off, use the four numbers for judging scheduling.
What it costs in time
Recreating services and availability takes a few hours for most firms. Updating every published booking link takes longer than people expect, because the links are scattered. The parallel-running period costs a little attention each day, mostly checking that nobody books into the old tool by mistake.
The mistake most firms make
Switching off the old tool on the day the new one goes live. Clients with existing bookings then receive no reminders, some turn up to find no record of their appointment, and the move gets blamed for a problem the timing caused.
Importing contacts without merging duplicates. Every duplicate means a booking may attach to the wrong record, and the client history splits in two.
When not to migrate
If your firm takes only a handful of bookings and none of the data needs to reach a CRM, the move is effort without return. Also delay it if you are mid-way through another large change, such as a new website. Do one move at a time.
Troubleshooting
Bookings still arrive in the old tool. An old link is still published somewhere. Search your site, signatures and profiles, and check any printed QR codes.
Imported appointments sent clients a second confirmation. The confirmation workflow fired on imported bookings. Pause it during the import, then turn it back on.
Service durations look wrong. The old tool included buffer time inside the duration. Separate the meeting length from the buffer on each new calendar.
Staff see slots when they are busy. Their external calendar is not connected yet. Connect it before you switch the links.
Frequently asked questions
Do clients need to do anything when we move?
No. Their existing bookings are honoured in the old tool, and new bookings use the new link.
Can we move service prices across?
You can take payment at booking when a payment provider is connected. Recreate each service's price on the new calendar if you charge at booking.
How long should both systems run side by side?
Until the last appointment booked in the old tool has taken place. For most firms that is a few weeks.
What happens to our booking history?
Keep the export from the old tool. Add a note or tag to imported contacts so the history is easy to trace later.