Moving your garage off spreadsheets

A spreadsheet is the right answer until two people need it at once. Here is what changes when the same information lives in something built for a garage.

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What moving to Pistonlog involves

Moving a garage off spreadsheets means replacing shared Excel or Google Sheets files with a system that knows what a customer, a vehicle and a job are. Pistonlog stops two people overwriting each other, checks registrations and dates as they go in, and can act on the data by texting MOT reminders and turning finished work into invoices. Because the data is already in a spreadsheet, the CSV import is straightforward: it covers customers and vehicles, previews every row before writing, and can be rolled back for 24 hours.

Read the garage software migration checklist

Where the spreadsheet gives up

Nothing wrong with a spreadsheet. It is just not built to be a garage's memory.

Two people, one file
Somebody has it open. Somebody else saves over the top. By Friday there are three versions with slightly different numbers and nobody knows which one is right.
It does not know what a car is
A spreadsheet will happily take a registration that does not exist, an MOT date in the past, and the same customer twice under two spellings. It has no idea any of that is wrong.
It cannot tell anyone anything
It will not text a customer that their MOT is due, it will not show a technician their jobs, and it will never turn into an invoice. Everything it knows, somebody has to act on by hand.

How the move goes

This is the easiest move there is, because the importer wants exactly what you already have.

  1. 1.Line your columns up

    You already have the data. Copy your customer and vehicle sheet, and put the columns in the order the Pistonlog template uses. If you keep one row per car with the owner repeated, that is exactly the shape it expects.

  2. 2.Fill in the Pistonlog template

    Download the template and paste your list into it. Customer name, business name, phone, email and address, then the registration, make, model, year, fuel, MOT date and mileage for each vehicle. Anything you have not got, leave blank.

  3. 3.Read the preview before anything is written

    Upload it and the server works out what it would do, then shows you. New customer, matched to one already in Pistonlog, or unclear. Nothing is written yet. Anything unclear stops the import rather than guessing which record you meant.

  4. 4.Commit it, and undo it if you need to

    When the preview looks right, commit. It all goes in as one lot, so you never end up half imported. If it turns out wrong you have 24 hours to roll the whole thing back.

  5. 5.Keep the spreadsheet for a fortnight

    Do not delete anything. Leave the file where it is, work out of Pistonlog, and check back if something looks missing. After two weeks nobody opens it, and you can archive it knowing you did not need it.

You already did the hard part. Your data is in a spreadsheet.

That is the only bit most garages dread, and it is the bit you have already finished.

All At Once
Nobody saves over anybody
Reception books a car in while a technician updates a job and you look at the week. Everyone is in the same records at the same time and nothing gets clobbered.
It Checks
Bad data gets caught
A registration gets looked up, a date has to be a real date, and the same customer under two spellings gets flagged instead of quietly becoming two customers.
It Chases
Reminders send themselves
The MOT date in column K used to sit there doing nothing. Now it texts the customer a few days out, whether or not anybody remembered.
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Questions before you move

The things garage owners actually ask, answered straight.

Can I import straight from Excel or Google Sheets?
Save it as a CSV using the Pistonlog template and upload that. Both Excel and Google Sheets export CSV in a couple of clicks, so there is nothing to install and nothing to convert.
My spreadsheet has one row per customer, not per car.
The template uses one row per vehicle, with the customer's details repeated on each of that customer's rows and tied together by a Customer Reference you choose. A customer with three cars gets three rows. It is a quick bit of copying down.
How many rows can I import at once?
A thousand rows per run, and the file needs to be under 4 MB. A bigger list goes across in batches, one run after another.
What if the same customer is already in Pistonlog?
Existing customers are matched on email, or on name plus phone number. A clear match gets reused rather than duplicated. Anything ambiguous, like two customers who could both be the match, stops the import so you can fix the row instead of Pistonlog picking one.
Do my old jobs and invoices come across?
No. The import covers customers and vehicles. If your spreadsheet holds job history too, keep the file. New work goes on jobcards in Pistonlog from the day you switch.

Have a look before you move anything

Set up an account, run a couple of real jobs through it, and only bring your customers across once you know it suits your garage.

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