Switch from Practice Better to Grove

Leaving a coaching platform is really two jobs: getting your data out of the old system, and setting your practice up in the new one so clients feel a clean handoff instead of a dropped one. If you want to switch from Practice Better to Grove, this guide walks both, in order, with the honest version of what transfers and what doesn’t. Grove imports your roster directly; your session history and documents come with you as your own archive, and the pieces that still matter get attached to each continuing client by hand. For where the two platforms genuinely differ, see the Grove vs Practice Better comparison.

One rule shapes the whole sequence, and it’s different from most migrations: Practice Better exports expire after 48 hours. They aren’t filed in your account for later, and Practice Better keeps no backups of them. So don’t start an export until you have time to download it, and plan the data half of this move as one or two focused sittings rather than something you pick at over a month. Keep your subscription active throughout: cancelling doesn’t delete your data, but your access, and your clients’ access to their portal, ends with your current billing period.

The terms you’ll see

Term	What it means
Contact information export	Practice Better’s self-serve roster export, run from the Fast Action Button on My Clients. A spreadsheet of first name, last name, and email.
Client archive	Practice Better’s per-client export, which you run yourself and assemble by ticking the data types you want. Arrives as a Zip of spreadsheets plus that client’s documents, announced by email. Confusingly, the button is Create Archive, which has nothing to do with archiving a client in Grove.
Bulk export request	Practice Better’s roster-wide export, which is not self-serve. You email their support team and they assemble it for you.
Draft	The status every imported Grove client starts in. Nothing has been sent to them yet; they’re only visible to you.
Session note	A Grove note about a client tied to a session date you choose, so past work keeps its real date.
Archive	Grove’s wind-down for a finished coaching engagement: the client stops counting toward your plan, their data stays readable, and you can restore them anytime.

Before you start

• Block out real time before you click anything. The 48-hour expiry means a half-finished export is a wasted one.
• Have a Grove account ready; if you don’t yet, start free. Uploading documents into Grove needs a paid plan, so plan that step for after you’ve picked your tier.
• You’ll cancel last, not first. Your clients lose their Practice Better portal on the same day you lose your account, so decide your cutover date before you touch the subscription.
• The rest of your stack can stay put. Your existing scheduling links and your existing Stripe account both keep working alongside Grove; this migration replaces Practice Better, not everything around it.
• If anything below doesn’t match what you’re seeing, email us at hello@grove.coach before you cancel anything. Practice Better changes its screens, and we would rather walk through your export with you than have you lose a window.

Steps

1. Export your roster as a spreadsheet. In Practice Better, go to My Clients, click the Fast Action Button (the + in the bottom-right corner), and select Export contact information. Click Download in the pop-up to save the file. You can filter your client list first, and the confirmation pop-up will tell you how many clients the filtered export covers.

   Heads up: this export carries first name, last name, and email only. Phone numbers aren’t in it. If you want those, they come through the per-client archive in step 3 instead.

2. Pick how you’re getting the rest of your history out. There are two routes. You can run a client archive yourself, one client at a time, ticking exactly the data you want (step 3). Or you can email help@practicebetter.io and request a bulk export of all your clients’ data and documents, which spares you the clicking but puts you on their timeline, with no published turnaround. Many coaches request the bulk export early, then run individual archives for the few clients whose history they most want control over.

   Tip: if you want the bulk export, request it first. The waiting then happens while you get on with the Grove half of the move.

3. Run a client archive for each client whose history you want. Open My Clients, click the More Options menu (the 3 dots) next to a client, and choose Export data. Tick the data types you want (they range from contact details and medical history through booking and invoice history to session notes, completed forms, journal entries, and message history), then click Create Archive. Practice Better emails you when it’s ready, and past exports are listed under Export history in the same menu. It arrives as a Zip of spreadsheets plus that client’s documents.

   Gotcha: download it the moment the email lands. Practice Better keeps these for 48 hours, then purges them, and keeps no backups. An archive you generated on Friday afternoon may be gone before Monday.

   Heads up: journal entries and message history come through as text only, so images and attachments inside a thread won’t be in the Zip. If a thread holds something that matters, an agreement, a health detail, a commitment, copy it out by hand while you still have access.

4. Pull the pieces that live outside the archive. Journals export from a client’s record via Journals, then Journal Settings, then Export, the only route carrying a date range and nutrient detail. Invoices export from My Practice > Billing & Payments > Export as a CSV for your accountant. And under My Practice > Reports, reports like Session History and Payment History each have a Download button.

   Tip: Session History is worth grabbing even if you skip the rest. It’s your appointment record, and Practice Better’s own migration team tells arriving coaches to export and keep their historical payment and invoice records themselves. The same applies on the way out.

5. Import your roster into Grove. On Grove’s Clients page, click Import Clients and upload the contact spreadsheet from step 1. Because that file holds just three columns, Grove’s column mapper matches all three on its own: confirm First Name, Last Name, and Email, then click through. Every imported client lands as a Draft and nothing is emailed to anyone. The Import your existing client roster guide walks the wizard step by step.

6. Archive the clients you’re not actively coaching. For each past client you imported for the record rather than the relationship, open their page and click Archive. The dialog, “Archive this client?”, confirms what happens: archived clients won’t receive check-in prompts or appear in your active list, and you can restore them later. Archiving frees their spot on your plan immediately while keeping the record.

   Tip: this is how a transition-based practice fits Grove. Your plan covers the people you’re coaching right now; finished engagements live on as archived records, one click from restored if someone returns.

7. Re-create the history that matters as dated session notes. For each continuing client, open their Notes tab and click Add a note. Choose the Session note kind, set Session date to the date the session actually happened (past dates are fine), and write up the summary from your archive. Each note keeps the session date you set, so the record reads true.

   Heads up: a Grove note holds up to 4,000 characters, the right size for the summary that will serve your next session, not a whole chart. For a long note, click Add from a photo or transcript instead, the separate button below the note composer: Sage drafts it from a photo or pasted transcript text, and you edit before saving.

   Gotcha: health information you brought over was consented to on Practice Better, not on Grove. Bringing it in on a client’s behalf makes that consent your responsibility; see who’s responsible for consent.

8. Attach the documents each client still needs. For handouts, plans, or files a continuing client should keep, open their Resources section and click Share Resource, or add the file to your library first via Create Resource and its Upload tab (PDF, DOC, DOCX, JPG, PNG, max 10 MB each). Everything else stays in your own archive; Grove doesn’t need to hold your whole history for you to coach from it.

   Heads up: file uploads need a paid Grove plan. On the free plan the upload option shows “Upload disabled, upgrade to add resources”.

9. Rebuild your intake form, then set the cutover date. Practice Better forms export as completed responses only, so the form itself is a rebuild. Recreate your questions with the Set up intake forms guide, using an exported response as your reference for what you used to ask. Then pick the date Grove becomes the place your clients check in, tell them ahead of time, and send each invite when you’re ready; Invite and onboard your first client covers that handoff. Cancel Practice Better only once every download is safe in your own storage.

   Gotcha: your services and packages, availability, programs and courses, protocol templates, and automations have no export at all. Write down anything you’ll want to rebuild while your account is still open.

If something looks wrong

• Your export email never arrived, or the link is dead. Practice Better purges exports after 48 hours, and the link dies with them. Run the export again, and download it as soon as the email lands.
• Your archive doesn’t hold what you expected. Practice Better changes its screens, and the exact shape of what’s inside a Zip can move. Email us at hello@grove.coach with what you’re seeing and we’ll work out what’s worth bringing over and what to copy by hand.
• You’re on a Practice Better free trial. Cancelling during a trial takes effect immediately rather than at the end of a period, so export everything before you touch the cancellation screen.
• You’re not ready to fully leave. Practice Better offers a paid account pause that retains your data, which is worth asking them about if you’d rather run Grove alongside for a while before committing.

What’s next

Your continuing clients are Drafts with their history attached and nothing sent yet. Work through Invite and onboard your first client to prepare each one’s space and send invites on your cutover schedule, then settle into the weekly rhythm that makes the move worth it: daily client check-ins as dialogue, with your response queue replacing the chart review.

And if any part of this stalls, email hello@grove.coach. Migrations are the one part of switching software where a real person helps more than a help article, and we would rather hear from you mid-move than after a window closed.