Switching Detailing Software Without Losing Your Customer List

Most detailers who are unhappy with their software stay with it anyway. Not because they like it, but because of what's inside it: four years of customers, their cars, what they paid last time, which ones get the coating maintenance every spring. Starting over in a new app feels like throwing that away.

It doesn't have to be. If you want to switch detailing software, the job is really three steps: export from the old app, import into the new one, and check nothing got mangled on the way. Here's how that works in Brilla, including the parts that usually go wrong.

Why switching usually goes badly

• Duplicates. The same customer shows up three times because one export had "Mike", another "Michael" and the phone number was formatted differently.
• Lost history. Customers come over, but not what they had done or what they paid.
• Automations firing at old customers. The new app sees 900 "completed" jobs and sends 900 review requests. That's a bad morning.
• No way back. You import a file with the columns mixed up and there's no clean undo.

Brilla's import tool, step by step

It lives under Settings, then Import from another app. The flow is: pick the app you're coming from, upload the file, preview, check the column mapping, import. Customers, their vehicles and past jobs or invoices are the core, and the same tool takes upcoming appointments, services and prices, coating and warranty records, maintenance plans, open quotes, inventory and expenses.

1. Pick your old app. Brilla has step-by-step export instructions for Jobber, Housecall Pro, Square, Urable, Detaild and Google Contacts, QuickBooks for expenses, and a general option for any spreadsheet.
2. Upload the export. A CSV file, up to 10 MB and 20,000 rows per import. For Jobber and Housecall Pro you can upload the customer file and the invoices or jobs file together. If the old app gives you an Excel file, open it and save it as CSV first.
3. Check the columns. Brilla recognises the known export formats and maps the columns for you; for anything else you match each column to a field (name, phone, vehicle make, job date, amount and so on). The mapping folds away when the format is already known.
4. Read the preview. Before anything is saved, you see what will happen: how many new customers, how many already in Brilla that get new details merged in, how many vehicles, past jobs and upcoming appointments (with any that overlap a job already on your calendar), and any rows that will be skipped and why.
5. Import, and undo if needed. If something looks wrong afterward, Undo removes what that import added and puts customers you already had back as they were.

How it avoids duplicates

Brilla checks each row against the customers you already have, in this order: the same email, then the same phone number, then the same name and street address. Phone numbers and addresses are compared in a normalised form, so "(910) 555-0142" and "910.555.0142" match, and "123 Main Street" matches "123 Main St".

There's one sensible exception. Families often share one email or one phone. If the email matches but the first names clearly disagree (Mike and Jennifer at the same address), Brilla doesn't merge them into one person. When a row does match, blank details get filled in, and tags and notes get added, without overwriting what's there.

Past jobs come in as history; upcoming ones as real jobs

Imported past jobs and invoices are treated as history. No automation touches them: no review request, no invoice, no reminder, no rain check, no "we miss you" email the moment they arrive. Your old customers won't know you switched unless you tell them. Imported invoice numbers get a prefix from the app they came from (JB for Jobber, HCP for Housecall Pro), so an old invoice 1042 never collides with a new Brilla one.

That history is still useful. It shows on the customer's record, so you can see that the Tahoe got a full detail last April for $260. Upcoming appointments are different: a job booked for next Thursday in the old app comes in as a scheduled job in Brilla. The import itself is silent (no confirmation email, no calendar invite), but from then on it's ordinary work: the day-before reminder goes out and, once you complete it, the automations treat it like any other job.

What to bring over, and what to leave

• Bring: every customer with a phone or email, their vehicles, and at least the last 12 to 24 months of jobs. That's what you'll actually look at.
• Consider leaving: leads who never booked and haven't replied in two years, and test entries from when you first set up the old app.
• Services and prices: import them if your old app exports a price list, then check each against your real costs. It's a good moment to fix the ones you've been undercharging for.
• Ceramic coatings: import your coating and warranty records so renewal reminders work going forward. A coating already inside its reminder window on import day doesn't get an automatic email, so an import never sends a burst; the preview tells you how many those are.
• Maintenance plans: they come in with auto-scheduling off, so nothing gets booked behind your back. Turn it on per plan once you've checked them.
• Quotes: only open quotes come over. Approved, lost and draft ones are skipped and listed.

What the import doesn't bring

It works from exported files. It doesn't connect to your old app directly, it doesn't copy over saved cards or payment methods (those stay with the old payment processor), and it doesn't bring photos. Text-message permission doesn't carry over either: customers who opted out of texts stay blocked, but a yes in the old app isn't treated as a yes in Brilla, which asks each customer itself. Export headers also vary between versions of the same app, so on files Brilla hasn't seen before, check the column mapping before you import. If you're still deciding where to go, our honest roundup of detailing software covers the main options.