1. What moves and what stays behind
Be clear about scope before you start — it prevents the most common launch-week complaint. A member import moves your members and their current membership:
| Comes across | Notes |
|---|---|
| First and last name | Split automatically if your export has one combined Name column |
| Email and phone | A placeholder email can be generated where one is missing |
| Membership plan and location | Matched to plans and locations you have already created |
| Status | Translated from your old system’s wording (paused, on hold, lapsed…) |
| Start date, renewal date and monthly price | Checked for date order before anything is written |
What does not come across, from any system:
- Stored card and bank details. They live inside your old provider’s payment processor and can’t legally or technically be handed over. Every member re-enters payment details once.
- Historical invoices and payment history. Export and archive them — your accountant will want them, and you can’t get them back after you cancel.
- Signed contracts and waivers. Download them in bulk before you close the old account.
- Class timetables, PT packages and product catalogues. These are rebuilt — usually an hour or two, and a good chance to drop what you never used.
- Member photos and passwords.
2. Tell your members first
A member asked for their card unexpectedly assumes they’ve been hacked. A member who was told last Tuesday just does it.
Your announcement should say what’s changing and when, that they’ll need to set up the new member app, that they’ll re-enter payment details once, and who to contact if anything looks wrong. Give your front desk a one-page version so everyone answers the same way.
3. Get your export early
Request your member export on day one, even if you won’t import for a fortnight — it’s the only step that depends on another company. Always export with an owner-level login: several platforms limit an export to the permissions of whoever runs it, so a front-desk login can silently export only part of your list.
| Platform | What to watch for |
|---|---|
| Mindbody | The client list is a mailing list with no membership data. You also need the membership report — expect two files. |
| ABC Glofox | Client filters depend on your Glofox plan. Export everyone and filter afterwards. |
| PushPress | The cleanest export of the lot — usually one file, one pass. |
| TeamUp | Don’t open the file in Excel before uploading; re-saving can mangle accented names. |
| Zen Planner | Export scope follows the logged-in user’s permissions. Use an owner login. |
| Wodify | Tick select-all and choose all pages, or you’ll export exactly one page of members. |
| Clubworx | No one-click export — build a member report first, or ask their support for members and memberships. |
| GymMaster | Members and memberships are two separate reports. Bring both. |
Using a spreadsheet you keep yourself? One row per member works fine: first name, last name, email, phone, plan, status, start date, renewal date, price.
4. Set up plans and locations first
An import matches each member to a plan and a location. If the plan doesn’t exist yet, every row that uses it is rejected. Before importing:
- Create every plan, named as it is in your old system — the match is then automatic. You can rename later.
- Include legacy and grandfathered plans, so members on old prices have somewhere to land.
- Create every location.
- Run a test import of 10–20 rows, check them, then delete them.
5. Run the import
In Gym Stack 360 the migration wizard walks you through eight steps, and nothing is written until you confirm on step seven:
- Source — pick the system you’re leaving.
- Export — click-by-click instructions for that system.
- Upload — CSV or Excel, no tidying needed.
- Match — columns are matched by name; fix any it guessed wrong.
- Setup — map the plans and locations found in your file.
- Fix — every problem row is shown before it becomes your problem.
- Review — a dry run and a confirmation naming the gym you’re importing into.
- Done — a headcount check, next actions, and an undo button.
6. The three things that corrupt an import
Date order
03/04/2025 is 3 April in Europe and 4 March in the US. Get it wrong and renewal dates are off by up to nine months — and nobody notices until billing runs. The wizard reads the whole file: a date like 25/12/2024 proves day-first. If nothing in the file settles it, you’ll be asked. Answer from what you know about your old system, not from how the dates look.
Plan prices
A suggested price per plan is a sensible default and still a guess. Check every plan’s price on the setup step — it’s the number members will be charged.
Status
No two platforms agree on what “paused” or “completed” means. Anything the wizard doesn’t recognise is shown to you rather than guessed, because a wrong status is a member who stops being billed — or one who’s billed when they shouldn’t be. Watch for “completed”: on several platforms it means a finished contract, i.e. expired.
7. Reconcile before you go live
- Count active members in both systems and write both numbers down. If they differ, find out why before going further.
- Revenue: total the monthly prices. It should be within a few percent of your old system’s monthly recurring revenue.
- Spot-check 10 members at random: plan, price, renewal date, status.
- Check the extremes: your oldest member, your newest, your most expensive plan, anyone frozen or past due.
- Filter for placeholder emails and start collecting real addresses.
- Filter for renewals in the next 7 days — the first people charged, and the first place a date error shows.
8. If something goes wrong
Wrong date order or everyone on the wrong plan? Don’t fix it member by member. In Gym Stack 360, undo the import — it removes only the rows that import created — then run it again with the right setting.
Stop and contact support before changing anything. Refunds and credit notes have to be issued in the right order to keep your invoice sequence intact.