How to switch booking system without losing a booking

You can switch booking system at any time without losing a booking, as long as you do it in the right order: set up the new system while the old one keeps taking bookings, bring your future bookings across, then on the day you switch, stop the old system, bring across the last few bookings, move your listing sites’ calendars and change the button on your website. This guide goes through each step, with the details for Kipdown where they help.

When to switch

The quietest time is between seasons, when there are fewest bookings to move and fewest guests to confuse. If your current system is paid a year in advance, as Bedful and Bookalet are, start a few weeks before it renews so you’re not paying twice. If it has a minimum term, as Campsite Booking System’s paid plans do, check when it ends.

You don’t have to wait for the winter, though. A move takes an afternoon of work spread over a few days, and guests who’ve already booked don’t need to do anything.

1. Set up the new system alongside the old one

Your old system carries on taking bookings while you set up the new one. In Kipdown, you sign up with a link to your website or to a listing on Hipcamp, Pitchup or Airbnb, and it fills in your stays and prices from it for you to check. Then:

• check each stay’s prices, rules and photos, and add anything it couldn’t find, such as prices for extra guests or changeover days
• set your open dates, since nothing can be booked online outside them
• connect card payments with Stripe, which takes about ten minutes and needs your bank details and a photo of your ID
• choose when guests pay, your cancellation terms and the email address guests’ replies go to

Make a booking yourself on the new booking page, as a guest would, so you know what your guests will see.

2. Bring your future bookings across

Download your future bookings from your old system as a spreadsheet. Most systems can export one; if yours can’t, a spreadsheet you’ve typed up works too. You need at least each guest’s name and their dates, and it helps to have what they booked, how many people, their email and phone, the price and what they’ve paid so far.

In Kipdown, go to Settings, then “Bring bookings across”. Choose the file, check which column is which, match what was booked to your stays, and look over the preview before you bring them across. A few things to know:

• What each guest has paid so far comes across with the booking, so nobody pays twice.
• Leave “Email each guest a confirmation” off if your old system has already confirmed them. They’ll still get the usual reminder before they arrive.
• Balances for bookings you bring across aren’t taken from a card automatically, because the card was given to your old system. Guests can pay from the link in their reminder, or the way you’d agreed before.
• Bring each booking across once. Bringing the same file twice makes each booking twice, which is why the switch day brings across only the newer ones.

Bookings that would clash with one already in Kipdown are left out and listed, so you can sort them out by hand.

3. Stop the old system on the day you switch

Pick a day for the switch, ideally a quiet one. That morning, turn off online booking in your old system, so nothing new comes in while you move across. Then download the bookings made since your first download, and bring only those across, so nothing is missed and nothing comes across twice.

If your old system can’t show bookings by the date they were made, compare its list of future bookings with Kipdown’s and add the few that are missing by hand.

4. Move your listing sites’ calendars

If you use Hipcamp, Pitchup, Airbnb or Booking.com, each one reads your old system’s calendar to know when you’re full. On the same day, replace that link with your Kipdown calendar link on each site, and add each site’s own calendar link to Kipdown so their bookings come in.

Kipdown checks the listing sites’ calendars every 15 minutes, and they read yours on their own schedule, so a site can occasionally sell a night just before it sees you’re full. If that happens, Kipdown tells you straight away so you can sort it out with the guest.

5. Switch on Kipdown and change your website

When the bookings and calendars are in, switch on online booking in Kipdown and change the booking button or page on your website to Kipdown’s. In Kipdown, Settings, then “Where guests book” gives you the link, or the code to put the booking page on a page of your website, with steps for WordPress, Squarespace and Wix.

Keep your old system’s account for a week or two in case you need to look something up, and cancel it once you’re sure everything came across.

6. Tell your regular guests

Guests who’ve already booked don’t need to do anything. If you send a newsletter or post on Facebook, it’s a good moment to say that booking on your own website is now quicker, since every booking made there saves you the commission a listing site would take.

A checklist for the day

• Your future bookings are in the new system, with what each guest has paid.
• Each listing site reads the new calendar, and the new system reads theirs.
• The booking button on your website opens the new booking page.
• Online booking is off in the old system and on in the new one, and the bookings made in between came across.
• You’ve made a test booking and cancelled it.

If you’re moving to Kipdown and get stuck at any step, email hello@kipdown.com.