How to change veterinary practice software without losing your history

Start with what your current supplier will export

This determines everything else, and it is the one question practices ask last. Before you evaluate a single new product, ask your existing supplier, in writing, what they will export, in what format, and at what cost.

The answer varies enormously. Some hand over clean structured files. Some export clients and animals but not consultation history. Some quote a fee. A supplier who will not answer that question in writing has told you something important about the next five years.

What usually comes across

• Clients, contact details and household structure
• Animals, identifiers, species and dates
• Consultation history, in some form — sometimes structured, sometimes as text
• Vaccination and reminder history
• Outstanding balances and open invoices
• Product and price lists

What rarely comes across intact

• Coded terminology from a different coding scheme — it usually lands as text
• Attachments and images, unless the supplier exports the files as well as the references
• Historical stock batch movements
• Anything held in a proprietary internal format the supplier does not document
• Report configurations and templates, which are quicker to rebuild than to translate

The sequence that works

1. Move at a quarter boundaryNot mid-VAT-quarter. Closing a VAT period across two systems is an avoidable weekend.
2. Keep the old system readableRetain read-only access for at least a year, or a full export you can actually open. Medical records carry retention obligations that outlive your subscription.
3. Migrate, then verify against realityPick twenty real clients across your species mix and check them by hand. Count animals per client, check a long consultation history, check an outstanding balance.
4. Run one week in parallelOne week, not three months. Long parallel runs create two divergent truths and staff quietly pick a favourite.
5. Cut over on a quiet dayNot a Monday. Not the day before a public holiday. And tell your clients nothing — a good migration is invisible from the waiting room.

What it costs in this market

Data migration in Belgium is commonly billed between 400 and 600 EUR one-time — Vet-Files publishes 400 EUR, ByVets 550 EUR. Some suppliers also charge an installation fee for a server version, and training by the hour plus travel.

Xolotl migrates your data free of charge, as far as the export from your current supplier allows, and training is in the subscription. To be exact about the mechanics: there is no push-button import wizard for every rival product, so part of this is genuinely done by hand at our end. That is our problem, not your invoice.

Common questions