Before you cancel anything, export your customers, vehicles, and closed invoices while the old account is still live. Almost nobody moves that data for you, and the day your subscription lapses is the day your history stops being yours to download.
Every article about switching shop management software is written by someone selling the migration. That is not a conspiracy, it is just who bothers to publish on the topic. The problem is it produces advice shaped like a sales process: talk to us, we’ll handle it, sign here.
This one runs the other way. Garage does not import your old data. We have no importer and no API, so if you move to us, you’re typing or pasting whatever you decide is worth keeping. That is a real cost and it belongs in your decision. What follows works no matter which product you land on, including the one you already use.
The short version
- Export everything before you cancel. Access usually dies with the subscription, and support tickets get slow once you are an ex-customer.
- Pull six files: customers, vehicles, closed invoices, open repair orders, parts inventory with costs, and whatever your bookkeeper needs to close the year.
- Ask the old vendor two questions in writing: what formats can I export, and how long do I keep access after cancellation.
- Run both systems in parallel for one full week. Not a day. A week catches the Monday rush and the Friday cash-out.
- Accept the losses on purpose: line-level invoice detail, attachments, and internal notes almost never survive a move.
- Go live between months, not mid-month, so your reporting has a clean seam.
How to switch shop management software without losing history
Start with the question nobody asks first. Not “which system,” but “what do I actually need to carry forward?”
Owners assume the answer is everything, then discover that everything is not exportable and panic. Sort your data into three buckets before you touch a single vendor.
Must have. Customer names, phone numbers, email addresses, and the vehicles tied to them. Without it you cannot call anybody.
Should have. A readable record of past work per vehicle: date, mileage, what was done, what it cost. It does not have to be structured. A PDF per invoice filed by VIN is worth more than nothing, and it is usually obtainable.
Nice to have. Line-level parts and labor detail, technician assignment, photos, internal notes, canned jobs, price matrices. Expect to lose most of it, or to rebuild it by hand.
Deciding this in advance is what keeps a migration from turning into a three-week project. Most shops discover the “must have” bucket is one spreadsheet.
The export checklist, in order
Do this while your current account is fully paid and active.
1. Customer list. Name, phone, email, address, and whatever internal ID the system uses. Export to CSV if offered. If the only option is a printed report, print to PDF and keep it; ugly beats gone.
2. Vehicle list. VIN, license plate, year, make, model, mileage at last visit, and the customer it belongs to. The link between vehicle and customer is the part that breaks in bad exports, so open the file and confirm the two are still connected.
3. Closed invoices. Ideally as data, realistically as PDFs. Many systems only give you one invoice at a time through the browser, which is tedious and still worth doing for your active customers. Sort by last visit date and pull the last two or three years first.
4. Open repair orders. These are live money. Print every open ticket on paper before cutover. Whatever else goes wrong, you can still cash out the cars in your bays.
5. Parts inventory with costs. Part number, description, quantity on hand, cost, and sell price. If you carry stock, this file is the difference between a smooth first week and guessing at margins. It rebuilds much faster if you already keep it in a sheet, which is the case we made in the parts inventory spreadsheet for an auto repair shop.
6. Anything financial your accountant touches. Sales tax collected, payments, deposits. Ask your bookkeeper what they need for the closed year before you lose the ability to run the report.
Store all six in one folder, backed up in two places. Then, and only then, start talking about cancellation dates.
What to ask the vendor you are leaving
Send it by email so you have the answer in writing.
- What formats can I export my data in, and can I do it myself without a support ticket?
- Does the export include vehicle history and invoice line detail, or headers only?
- How long do I keep read-only access after I cancel?
- Is there a fee to receive a full data dump, and are photos included?
The answers vary wildly and none of them are secret. A vendor that will not answer in writing has answered.
What to ask the vendor you are joining
Same discipline, opposite direction, and this is where marketing pages get vague.
- Do you import data, or do I enter it? If you import, from which systems, in which format, and what does it cost?
- What exactly gets imported: customers only, or vehicles and history too?
- How long does it take, and who does the work?
- If I leave later, how do I get my data out?
That last question tells you more about a company than the feature list does. Ask it during the trial, not after.
For the record, our answer to the first one is that Garage has no importer. You set up customers and vehicles as they come through the door, or enter your regulars up front. Some owners prefer that, because it doubles as a cleanup of a list that has been collecting dead records for a decade. Plenty of others hate it, and for them a product with an import path is the better buy.
What always gets lost
Plan for these instead of being surprised by them.
Line-level history. You may keep “brake job, $612, March 2024” and lose which pads, which rotors, and who did the work.
Photos and attachments. Rarely exportable in bulk. If your digital inspections matter, download the ones attached to vehicles you expect to see again.
Internal notes. The “always call before ordering parts for this guy” layer is usually invisible to any export.
Canned jobs and pricing matrices. Configuration, not data. Rebuilding them is a half day, and a decent excuse to fix the pricing you have been meaning to fix; markup vs margin in auto repair pricing is where to start.
Appointment history. Future appointments usually have to be re-entered by hand. Print the next four weeks before you switch.
Run both systems for a week
This is the step people skip and the step that saves the switch.
Pick a Monday. For one full week, write every repair order in the new system and keep the old one open in a second tab as your reference for history and prices. You will be slower. That is the point: you are finding the gaps while you still have the safety net.
Watch for four things:
- Can you get through a full cash-out without opening the old system? Estimate, approval, invoice, payment.
- Does a returning customer’s vehicle look right? Search by license plate or VIN and see what comes back. In Garage that search returns your own shop’s history on that vehicle, so it only shows what you have entered since going live.
- Do your printed and emailed documents look right? Logo, tax lines, terms, disclaimers.
- Can your tech use it without you? Hand a job over and say nothing.
At the end of the week you either commit, or you back out having lost one week instead of one quarter.
Timing the cutover
Switch at a month boundary so your reporting has a clean line. Avoid your busiest stretch: FHWA data on miles driven shows July as the heaviest month and February the lightest, a spread of about 24.5%, so late winter is a kinder time to be slow on purpose.
Cancel the old subscription only after the parallel week ends, the exports are stored in two places, and every open ticket from the old system has been cashed out. One extra month of overlap is the cheapest insurance in this entire process.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose my customer history if I switch shop software?
Only if you cancel before exporting. While your account is active you can usually pull customers, vehicles, and invoices yourself. After cancellation, access often ends immediately and the data becomes a support request you may not win.
Can shop management software import my old data?
Some do, some do not, and the ones that do usually limit it to customers and vehicles rather than full history. Ask for specifics in writing before you buy. Garage does not import, so you enter your own records.
How long does switching shop software take?
Budget one week of running both systems side by side, plus a few hours up front for exports and a few more rebuilding configuration like canned jobs and pricing. Shops that try to do it in a single day are the ones that end up back on the old system.
Should I keep paying for the old software after switching?
For one month, yes. The overlap lets you look something up instead of guessing, and it costs far less than a botched cutover.
Bottom line
The migration is not the hard part. Losing access to your own history is, and it happens for one reason: somebody cancelled before they exported.
Pull the six files, get both vendors on record in writing, run parallel for a week, cut over at a month boundary. Do that and the worst case is a slow week.
Garage is 7 days free, no card, month to month. That’s the parallel week, and you decide at the end of it.
Related reading: what shop software really costs in your first year · spreadsheet vs software for an auto repair shop · parts inventory spreadsheet · auto repair invoice template
