Moving from Front Desk to Power Diary

Find out what data can be imported from Front Desk to Power Diary and how to export your data for a smooth transition.

We can import your data from Front Desk into your Power Diary account!  

Practices are frequently moving from Front Desk to Power Diary. To find out why and learn how the two compare check out our Power Diary vs Front Desk Comparison Article.

  • Practices are moving from Front Desk to Power Diary every week and as such, we have invested in developing a streamlined process for importing Front Desk Data, which allows our team to prepare your data for import in a more efficient and timeous manner. 
  • We want to make your move from Front Desk as seamless and pain-free as possible. Once you have made the decision to move over to Power Diary, we are able to assist with importing data into your Power Diary account as a once-off complimentary service. There are no charges associated with the import. 
  • If your migration to Power Diary is time sensitive, please contact us to discuss the option of booking your import in with our Team, to ensure that it gets the priority that it needs.

This article covers:

Additional information:

Please click on these links to access additional important/relevant information to your data import, and getting ready to switch over to using Power Diary.

    Important: Please read through the above articles as they contain information generic to  all data imports/migrations, but not included in this Front Desk-specific article.  If you have any questions that aren't answered in any of these articles, we encourage you to contact us. 

    We can import the following Front Desk data:

    based on previous Front Desk imports conducted by our Team, we can import:

    • Clients
    • Appointments: Personal, Client, and Group (**all appointment history as well as future appointments included)
    • Tasks (from Recalls)
    • Third parties (from Groups)
    • Client Classifications (from Categories)
    • Client Insurers
    • Contacts
    • Clinical Notes (These are received in HTML format and will be imported to Records > Files, and tagged as "Notes" so that they can be located easily)
    • Admin Notes (from Account Events)
    • Invoices and Payments
    • Referrers **please see important notes below
    • Referrals
    • Services (from Items)
    • Client files/documents:  see requirements in our "Importing your Data FAQ" helpdesk article - click here

    * If there is any other data that is of particular importance to you, to have imported, and has not been mentioned in the above list, please let us know, and our Team can check your data to try to locate that data and ascertain if it is viable for import.

    Exporting your data from Front Desk

    • To export your data from Front Desk you will need to contact them directly and inform them that you would like to export your database and that you require a  decrypted BAK file of the data. 
    • Front Desk may charge for this process. 
    • The database must be decrypted for us to be able to access and import the clinical notes and upload documents into the client's files area.

    If you are unsure how to export your data from Front Desk, please reach out directly to their support team as they would be best placed to assist you with this.


    Important Notes.

        • You must provide a decrypted BAK file of the data to have the Clinical Notes and Attachments uploaded. This will allow the data for the notes and attachments to be accessible. We are not able to upload Clinical Notes and Attachments if the data is encrypted. To obtain a decrypted copy of the data please contact Front Desk to request this.
        • Clients:
          • Any fields that are not compatible with a specific field in the client profile are added to the Additional Comments section of the profile.
          • Charge Types will be imported as the Client Type.
          • Warnings and Reminders are imported as the client Alert Note (pops up when the user adds a new appointment for the client) however if the text exceeds 500 characters it will be added to the Additional Comments section.
          • Text is not able to be recorded in the phone number or email fields so this will be removed from the Mobile, Home Phone, Work Phone, Fax, and Email fields.
          • Where marked as a Company the client will be imported as a Third Party.
          • The client's default biller will be set based on their Default Account. 
          • Medicare Claimants will be added as contacts of the clients.
          • Address details are not formatted consistently in Front Desk therefore all elements of the address will be merged into the Address field.
          • Clients marked as inactive will be set as archived (see more about archived profiles here)
        • Referrers:  It has come to our attention that the Referrer export from Coreplus is missing a critical field that allows us to match the Coreplus referrals to the correct referrer.
          • The field missing from the Referrers.txt file is the ReferrerID, and without it when we import referrals from Coreplus we have to match the referral to the corresponding referrer based on the referrer name (first name and last name).
            When there are instances of duplicate referrers in your dataset this means we have no way of knowing which is the correct referrer to link to the referral.
            To avoid encountering any issues with your referrals when they are imported to Power Diary we highly recommend sending an email through to Coreplus support at support@coreplus.com.au requesting the following:

            Hi Support,

            I am looking to move my data to a new system, as such I need to be provided with a Referrers.txt export file that includes the ReferrerID so that I can accurately match my referrals to their referrers.
            1. The exact name of the account the export is required from is: Insert account name here
            2. The exact name of the supervisor the export is required from is: Insert supervisor name here

            Thank you for your assistance and please just let me know if you require further information.

            Regards,
            Insert Name

            Once you have been provided with the Referrers.txt from Coreplus we ask that you include in your upload to us to ensure that your referrals are imported as expected.
            If you have any questions or would like any further information about this issue, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
        • Third parties:
          • The Third-Party details (payees for client's invoices) are stored in Front Desk in a manner that results in duplicate entries for the same third party. In order to reduce overwhelm and confusion, the following approach is taken:
            • The Third-Party Profiles obtained from Groups (which tend to be more complete profiles, often including contact details) will be imported and remain as active third parties.  
            •  Each payee linked to a client is imported as a unique Third Party Profile, in order to present invoices as expected, however, these third parties will be archived.  If needed, archived profiles can be unarchived, per the instructions here. if needed you can merge similar third-party profiles into one as per the instructions on merging profiles here
        • Items: 
          • Will all be imported as Services as there is no indication in the data to determine if the entry is a service or product.  If you'd like to update imported items from Service to Products please follow these steps after the import is completed so that we can update them for you:
            • 1. Log in to your Power Diary account
            • 2. Go to Tools > Data Export > Select "Services, Products & Packs" > Click "Download"
            • 3. Open the excel file
            • 4. Add a new column header titled 'Change to product'
            • 5. Write "PRODUCT" in the rows which you'd like to be changed to a product as shown in the screenshot below
              • b348f66950310e0232b18e2f2bd5b5f6.png6. Save the file and attach it to an email reply back to the Data Import Tea (support@powerdiary.com). We can then run an update to the data to change them to Products.
          • Only one price is able to be imported for services in Power Diary. We will use the first listed charge as the price for the item.
          • There is no duration listed for services, so this will be defaulted to 60 minutes.
          • The Name of the service/products in Power Diary has a 100-character size limit, so any characters in the name exceeding this limit will be split into the description field.
        • Transactions:
          • Refunds, Write-Offs, and Fee Reductions will be imported as Payments.
          • Not all payments come with a payment method, these will be defaulted to a payment method named "Paid".
        • Appointments:
          • There is no link provided between the appointments and invoices so they will not be connected directly
          • The Item Code is imported into the notes of the appointment.
          • Appointment Type is imported as an Appointment Flag in Power Diary.
          • Recurring appointments are not maintained in the import. This is because the way that this information is stored is very different between systems making it unviable for import. Appointments in a recurring series will instead be imported as individual appointments.
        • HTML Session Notes will be imported to Records → Files with a tag of "Notes". This allows retention of the original formatting and appearance of the session note. *The Note date = the File date
        • Files: If your files contain .fdd format documents, please be aware that this is a Front Desk proprietary file format that cannot be read outside of Front Desk, and we cannot extract some of the data/images to render into the files that we transform for importing into your PD account.  As a general statement, the actual text tends to be complete, however, there are some images that cannot be rendered into the documents
        • In addition to what has been discussed above, we do recommend that you read all generic "Important notes" relevant to importing your data, as documented here as there are relevant learnings and important information relevant to your data import that you need to be aware of. 

      If you have any questions, please contact us at support@powerdiary.com

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