Exporting, importing and reporting

Exporting your data

You can export all data on your account, including customers, reservations, and events with participants, as CSV files. Go to Setup > Export and click the export you want.

The export is generated in the background. After a few minutes you will receive an email with a download link. The link is only active for 15 minutes, so download the file right away. If the link has expired, just run the export again.

The reservations export contains all bookings with customer information, including fields such as paid amount, invoiced date, coupon code, and who created or updated the booking. Answers to custom fields are included in the export of the object they are stored on: custom booking fields are in the reservations export, and the event participant export includes custom fields too. So if you are looking for a custom field answer and don't see it in the customer export, export reservations instead.

The export email never arrived

If you clicked export and no email shows up:

• Check your spam folder first. The export is sent from a makeplans.com or makeplans.net address, not your own domain.
• Try triggering the export again from Setup > Export.
• If it still doesn't arrive, your email provider may be blocking the message. Contact us and we can check the delivery log and tell you what to ask your email provider to whitelist.

Exports are delivered as a download link rather than an attachment, so account size no longer prevents delivery.

Opening the export in Excel

The export is a plain CSV file that can be opened in Excel (or Numbers on Mac). CSV is a simple format but it has regional differences, so columns or special characters can occasionally display incorrectly depending on your program and region settings. If that happens, contact us with a screenshot and the name of the program you are using and we will help. Note that phone numbers in the export follow the international standard with full country code.

Importing customers

You can import your existing customers from another system. There is no self-service import: send us a simple Excel or CSV file and we will import it for you, free of charge. Guidelines for the import file:

• Use a plain file with one header row and then one row per customer, with no extra text or formatting.
• Supported standard fields include name, first name, last name, email, phone number, address fields, country code, date of birth, national ID and external ID. Use the exact column names and leave out fields you don't use.
• Custom fields can be imported too. The column name in the file must match the custom field name on your account.
• Phone numbers must include the full country code for non-domestic numbers.
• An email or phone number that already exists on another customer will be skipped, since these fields are unique in MakePlans.

We recommend only importing customers that have an email address or phone number. MakePlans uses email and phone as the customer identifier, so imported profiles without them will not be matched when the customer later books.

Statistics and reports

Built-in reporting in MakePlans is deliberately simple, and we plan to improve it. For anything beyond the basics, export your bookings from Setup > Export and build your own reports and charts in Excel: you can filter by date, resource, service and status, and sum up amounts there.

For payment reporting, use the reports where the payment was actually processed: Vipps, Stripe, or your invoicing system. MakePlans stores the paid amount on the booking, but it is not an order or accounting system. If you want an ongoing report, you can use our Zapier integration to push each new booking into, for example, Google Sheets automatically.

Sending an SMS or email to all customers

SMS: go to Setup > Tools and use "Send SMS to all your customers". Note that this sends to absolutely all customers stored on your account, with no filtering or segmentation, and you must have pre-purchased enough SMS credits to cover every customer before sending.

Email: there is no built-in function for emailing all customers. Export your customer list from Setup > Export and import it into a newsletter service such as Mailchimp. We also have direct integrations with Mailchimp and MailerLite that automatically add every new customer as a subscriber going forward; the export and import is only needed for customers created before you enabled the integration.

For messages tied to a specific booking (confirmations, reminders, follow-ups), use message templates under Setup > Message templates instead. These are automatic per-booking messages, not a blast to your whole customer base.