How to switch campground software without losing a reservation

Switching software is the thing most owners dread, and for good reason. A bad move means double bookings, a guest who shows up to a site that is not there, or a deposit that vanishes. This guide is written to prevent those three things.

It covers what to export from the systems we have researched, what the CampStack import does, how to move your future reservations, why to run both systems for a week, how to tell your guests, and when to schedule all of it.

Before you start: the three files

Every switch comes down to three files:

1. Sites. One row per rentable site, cabin or unit.
2. Guests. One row per person or family.
3. Reservations. One row per stay, from today forward.

Two more are optional but helpful: rates (your rate sheet) and payments (history, mainly for deposits on future stays).

CSV is a plain spreadsheet file. If your old system gives you Excel files, that works too. We read the first sheet of an Excel file and tell you which sheet we read.

If you cannot find an export, ask your current provider's support team for your sites, guests and future reservations. Your records are yours.

Moving from Campspot

What Campspot publishes: its support center is at support.campspot.com. The individual help articles sit behind a login, so we have not read them, and we cannot tell you the menu path, the report names or the column names. We would rather say that than guess.

Ask for these, from your own Campspot admin or from Campspot support:

• A reservations report, for the widest date range it allows, covering all future stays.
• A site list.
• A guest export. If you cannot find one, ask Campspot support for it.
• Your rates. If there is no export, ask support, or work from a screenshot or PDF of your rate sheet and enter the rates by hand.

Watch for: reservations that began before your date range may appear again at the edge of the range, so the same stay can show up twice. CampStack matches on confirmation number to catch this. Add-ons may be mixed into the reservation rows, and we separate them from site stays. Guest details in a reservation report may be limited, so phone numbers and addresses can be blank.

Moving from Campground Master

Campground Master publishes a help manual on its site, and its export instructions are clear.

• Almost any grid or tab view report can be exported. In the File menu, choose "Export Current View". On dialogs with a grid, there is an "Export List" button. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl-F10.
• The file is a CSV with a header row, exactly as shown on screen. Every field is wrapped in quotes.
• Copying and pasting from a grid gives tab-separated text without headers. Use Export, not copy and paste.
• Raw data tables can be exported from Maintenance, then Raw Data Tables. This is the likely route for full customer, reservation and site tables. The manual does not list the table names, so look at the screen.

Ask yourself: what is on my screen is what I export. So set your filters first, and include site name, arrival, departure, customer, rate, deposit and balance if those columns are available.

Watch for: dates follow the Windows regional settings of the office computer. Often that is month/day/year, but check one row. Site names in your reservation file must match your site list exactly. Customers and reservations may be separate files linked by an ID, so keep the ID column.

Moving from Firefly Reservations

Firefly documents its reports. You run them from the main menu, under Reports: pick a report, pick a date range and click Run. You can export as PDF, CSV or Excel, and a report exports as displayed, so sorted, filtered or hidden columns carry over.

Reports to run:

• Units (your sites) and Rates, listed under Property reports.
• Guests, with all dates.
• Reservations and Reservation Units, from today to the end of your booking window, plus a second range for guests who are in house now and arrived earlier.
• Payments, Charges or Deposit Summary, for deposits already taken on future stays.

Firefly's own help page warns that some systems export the number of nights instead of the departure date, which makes an import off by one day on every reservation. Check that your file has a departure date. If it has nights only, we compute the departure as arrival plus nights, and show you three sample stays to confirm.

Watch for: reservation and unit information are separate reports, so include the reservation ID in each. Clear every column filter and the search box before you export, or rows will be missing. Column names for each report are not published on the pages we read.

Moving from RoverPass, CampLife and others

RoverPass publishes how to run reports in its owner portal: Reports, then pick a report, apply filters, and download. It opens in Excel or Google Sheets, so use File, Download, CSV afterward. We could not find a dedicated site list or guest list export on its help pages. Ask support, or take sites and guests from the reservation details report.

CampLife says on its FAQ page that all reports can be exported as CSV. It does not publish a step-by-step path or column names, so ask CampLife support if you cannot find them.

For any other vendor that does not publish export details, the answer is the same: ask their support for your sites, guests, future reservations and rates as CSV or Excel.

Moving from a spreadsheet or paper book

This is the easiest switch. Use one tab or file per type: sites, guests, reservations.

• In Google Sheets, choose File, Download, Comma-separated values. Only the current sheet downloads.
• In Excel, choose File, Save As, and pick CSV UTF-8. Only the active worksheet is saved.
• Format ZIP codes and phone numbers as Text before saving so leading zeros are not lost.
• Remove merged cells, blank spacer rows, totals rows and multi-line headers.
• If you keep one sheet per month, combine them into one with a year column, or upload one file per sheet.

From a paper book, type sites and the next season of reservations into a spreadsheet. That takes an evening, and it is usually the first time you see all your reservations in one place.

The CSV mapping screen

You upload your files. CampStack reads the header row and shows a screen where each of your columns is paired with one of ours. You do not have to rename anything. If your column says "Arr" and ours says arrival date, you point one at the other.

The fields we look for:

• Sites: site name (required), type, class, max occupancy, max rig length, hookups, active, default rate, description.
• Guests: a unique key, first and last name, email, phone, address, vehicle, rig, notes, email opt-out.
• Reservations: confirmation number, guest, site name, arrival, departure, status, adults, children, nightly rate, site total, add-ons, tax, total, deposit paid, amount paid, balance due, source, stay type, notes.
• Rates (optional): rate name, season start and end, nightly, weekly, monthly, minimum nights, weekend nightly, extra adult and child.
• Payments (optional): confirmation number, date, amount, method, kind, reference.

Dates can be YYYY-MM-DD or month/day/year. If a column could be read two ways, we show a sample and ask you. We drop time stamps. We never import full card numbers, and we reject any column that looks like one.

Then comes the preview. Before anything is saved, you see counts, guests that would merge, sites we could not match, stays that overlap on one site, and bad dates. Nothing is dropped silently. Rows we cannot place go to an "unassigned" list for you to fix. When you approve, the import runs. If something looks wrong, you can undo the whole batch.

Moving your future reservations

Your future reservations are what matter most. Past stays can stay in your old system as a PDF.

1. Export every reservation with an arrival date from today forward.
2. Export current in-house guests too, since their departure is still ahead.
3. Import them. Deposits and balances come in as recorded amounts. We do not charge anyone, send invoices or email guests during an import.
4. Future stays with a balance due stay marked as owing, so you can collect through CampStack.
5. Cancelled and no-show rows are skipped by default for future dates, unless you want them for history.

Seasonal and monthly guests import as one reservation marked seasonal. Put their payment schedule in the notes for now and set up billing in CampStack after the import. We do not generate monthly invoices automatically from an import.

Pull the first twenty arrivals and check them by hand against your old system: site, dates, guest name, amount paid. That ten-minute check catches almost everything.

Run both systems for a week

Do not turn the old system off on the day you import. Run both for a week.

• Take every new booking in CampStack, and mirror it in the old system if you must.
• Each morning, compare the day's arrivals in both.
• Keep your old booking page up until you are sure, then replace it with the CampStack link or widget.
• Connect Stripe and take a small test payment on yourself before you turn on online booking.

If you find a mismatch, fix it in CampStack and note what caused it. After a week of clean mornings, cancel the old system. Keep its export files somewhere safe.

Telling your guests

Guests with a future reservation do not need to do anything. Their booking is already in the new system. A short note helps:

• Tell them their reservation is confirmed and nothing changes about their site, dates or price.
• Tell them where to find your new booking page.
• If they paid a deposit, tell them you have it on file.

Do not ask guests to rebook. Post a short notice on your website and Facebook page when the new booking link goes live. If your old confirmation emails carried a link, replace it.

When to switch

Switch in your off season. A campground in the northern states might do it in late fall or early winter. A campground in the Sun Belt may find a slow summer week works better. Pick the quietest stretch you have, not the week before opening.

A calm schedule looks like this: export on day one, import on day two, check the preview and arrivals on days three and four, run both for a week, then cut over. Plan on two weeks and you will not feel rushed.

If you must switch mid-season, do it on a weekday with few arrivals, and run both systems longer.

Cost to switch

The import is part of the plan. There is no setup fee and no data migration charge. During the launch offer the software is free until your first 25 online bookings. See pricing for the details.

If you are still comparing, read how CampStack stacks up against Campspot, Firefly, CampLife, RoverPass and Campground Master. If you want to see what your current guest fees add up to, try the booking fee calculator. To put your rates in order before you move, download the seasonal rate template. Back to the owner overview.