Switching park software without retyping your whole park

1 Save a copy of your old records

A spreadsheet or CSV export is simply rows and columns. One row might be a site, a booking, a guest, a store item, or an expense. The column names tell the new program what each piece means: site name, arrival date, guest name, nightly rate, item price, and so on.

Exports are rarely perfect. One program may call a field “site,” another may call it “space.” Dates may be written in different orders. A rate may include a currency sign, a note may be sitting in a number field, or two bookings may point to the same site on the same night. Those are normal moving problems — and they are exactly why a careful preview matters.

Keep the original export untouched. Work from a copy, and never edit the only version of your old records. Before a full move, bring in a small, familiar set first — your sites are a sensible place to begin. Check the names, types, and rates against what you know. When the sites look right, move to bookings and guests, then store items, sales history, expenses, and the other records you want to keep.

This step happens in your old program — the buttons start with the next step, in Camp Orbit.

2 Create your Camp Orbit account

You create your account with an email address and a password, then choose your plan and pay inside the app. Use the same email at checkout as the one on your account, so your payment connects to your park.

Create your account

3 Add your park and your sites

Add your park's name and address, then add each site with its type and nightly rate. If your sites are in a file from your old program, you can skip the typing — the next step brings them over.

Open Camp Orbit

4 Bring your records over, one kind at a time

In Camp Orbit, the switch-over importer works from simple files and can bring in sites, past and future bookings, guests, store items, store sales history, expenses, and more. Each step offers a blank form shaped for that kind of record, so you can see the columns expected before you prepare a file.

Open Camp Orbit

5 Check the preview before you say yes

A good import should show you what is about to happen before it changes your park. Read the preview with three questions in mind:

• Do the totals make sense — the number of sites, bookings, guests, or items?
• Do a few names, dates, and amounts match the old program exactly?
• Are any rows marked as a problem, and do you understand why?

Spot-check more than the first row. Look at a long stay, a cancelled booking if you are keeping history, a guest with a long name, and an item with an unusual price. Small files hide problems; mixed files reveal them while they are still easy to correct.

Open Camp Orbit

6 Fix any rows that were skipped

A skipped row is not a failed move. It is the program refusing to invent a fact about your park.

If a nightly rate cannot be read, turning it into zero would create a false record. If a guest count is unclear, choosing a number for you could change the booking. If a date cannot be understood, placing the stay on the wrong weekend would be worse than leaving the row out for the moment.

Camp Orbit's importer skips a row with a problem and lists a plain reason for the skip. You can fix the file or enter that one record by hand, with the correct information in view. The clean rows still come in. Re-running a corrected file is also duplicate-safe, so records already brought in are not created a second time.

Open Camp Orbit

7 Compare both programs, then make the switch

Before the old program goes quiet, compare the two systems on an ordinary day. Count the sites. Open several upcoming bookings. Find a past guest. Check a store item and a recent expense. Print or save the comparison notes with your export files.

Switching software will always take some care. It should not take weeks of typing. A clear file, a careful preview, and honest handling of problem rows can move the heart of a park while keeping its history intact.

Open Camp Orbit