Your client list is yours — here's how to get it out of any booking platform

Here’s something worth saying plainly, because the booking-software industry prefers it stay vague: your client list belongs to you. The names, the numbers, the emails — those are your business relationships, collected chair by chair over years. Every major platform lets you export them, even if the button isn’t on the front page. The feeling that your book is trapped is the single biggest thing keeping owners on software they’ve outgrown, and it’s mostly a feeling.

This is the practical guide: what to export, where the button is, and what you can’t take (with the honest workaround).

Vagaro

Your client list: Reports → Clients → export to Excel. Takes about thirty seconds, no permission needed, and the file is a normal spreadsheet — names, phone numbers (cell, day, night), emails, tags.

Your appointment history is different. Vagaro doesn’t let you export it yourself — you have to request the file from their support. Do that before you cancel, while you still have an account in good standing, and keep whatever they send.

GlossGenius and Square

Both export your client list as a spreadsheet, too — Square from the Customers section of its Dashboard, GlossGenius from your client settings. The shape varies slightly (column names, how phone numbers are stored), but it’s the same idea: a file you download and own.

What survives the trip — and what doesn’t

Across every platform, roughly the same things are portable:

• Comes with you: names, phones, emails, and usually tags or notes.
• Needs asking: appointment history (Vagaro), sometimes notes.
• Doesn’t transfer anywhere: reviews left on the platform’s own marketplace or profile. Your Google reviews are unaffected — they live on your Google Business Profile, not inside any booking tool, and they stay put no matter what software you run.

What to do with the file

If you’re moving to Parlor: Clients → Import, drop the file in. The importer recognizes Vagaro, GlossGenius, and Square exports automatically — no column mapping unless you want it — shows you a preview, and runs a dry-run report first: “N new, M merged, K skipped,” with nothing saved until you confirm. Most lists land in about ten minutes; files past five thousand rows just take a little longer. If you’d rather not touch a spreadsheet at all, send it to us and we’ll do it with you on a call, free.

And even if you’re not moving anywhere: export your list this week anyway, and put the file somewhere safe. It’s your book. Software should have to earn the right to hold it, month after month — not own it by default.

Moving from Vagaro specifically? The full switching guide covers the rest of the move — pricing, what you give up, what you get back.