Bringing an existing practice into TherapyLock

At a Glance

There is no import button, and that is deliberate; moving across is a short manual exercise, an evening's work for most practices, and this article walks you through both halves of it.

Why there is no import button

Exports from other systems usually arrive full of client names and identifying details. TherapyLock is built to hold as little identifying information as possible, and importing a file wholesale would pour all of it straight back in. Entering clients by hand is slower by an hour or two, and in exchange every record starts clean.

Part one: moving your client data across

1. Keep your export safe while you work. Store the exported file somewhere secure on your own device or an encrypted drive. Do not email it to yourself.

2. Create each client you are still working with. Use Create New Client and give each one a private identifier, keeping the identity itself out of the code and in your separate key, as described in Adding a new client. Add contact details and the optional fields only where you genuinely need them.

3. Give every client their real therapy dates. This is the step that matters most, and the one easiest to miss. Set the date therapy started as it truly was, not today. For a client whose therapy has already finished, record the date it ended too: the retention clock runs from that date, so a record entered without it will be kept years longer than it should be. For a child or young person, set the manual deletion date in line with your professional requirements.

4. Upload paperwork that belongs to a client. Open their record, go to Documents, and upload their assessment, consent form, correspondence, whatever you want to keep. It all travels with them in any future export.

5. Put practice-wide paperwork in Practice Documents. Insurance, policies, your supervision contract: those belong to you, not to a client record.

6. Old notes: summarise or attach. Two sensible options. Write one summary note per client covering the work so far, or save the old notes as a single PDF per client and upload it to their Documents. Both keep the history without retyping years of sessions. If you do write notes, remember they lock once saved, so give each its correct session date first time.

A word about file size before you scan. TherapyLock accepts files up to 55MB, and scanned notes reach that ceiling surprisingly fast: a scanner saves each page as a photograph, so even a page holding a few lines of handwriting weighs as much as a holiday snap, and a few hundred pages of them can outweigh the limit. Three ways around it:

• Scan in black and white, on your scanner's document or text setting rather than colour. Notes stay perfectly readable and the file shrinks several times over
• Split long histories into parts. One PDF per year, or per block of work, files just as well as one giant file
• Compress on your own device, such as Preview's Reduce File Size on a Mac. Never put clinical notes through an online "compress my PDF" website: that is client data handed to a stranger

7. Delete the original export when you are finished. Remove the file and any working copies from your device, and close the old subscription in line with its own terms.

A practical tip before you begin: you rarely need to bring across clients you finished with years ago. Move the people you are currently seeing, plus any records you are required to retain, and let the rest arrive as documents.

Part two: recording sessions that already happened

The calendar accepts past dates, so historic sessions can go in. The key is the status: only sessions marked Attended count towards the session totals on your dashboard and your practice hours. A past appointment left as Scheduled counts for nothing yet, which is usually why a total looks wrong.

1. Open the calendar and travel back. Year view is the quickest way to jump a long way.

2. Add the appointment as normal: client, date, time, duration. TherapyLock will check you mean it, since the date has passed; confirm and it goes in.

3. Click the appointment and record attendance. Mark it Attended, and it now counts. Sessions recorded as cancelled or did-not-attend are kept for your records but never counted as therapeutic hours.

4. Write the note from the appointment if you want the full history in one place. It files against the client with the correct date.

The faster route: earlier hours as one figure

If you only need your hours total to be right, and you do not need every past session listed, do not enter hundreds of appointments. On the calendar, open the practice hours section and choose Earlier hours. The Hours before TherapyLock form opens. Give it a short description, "Hours to 31 August 2026 from previous system" says it well, the number of hours, whether they are client or supervision hours, and the date they are counted up to. That figure joins your all-time total.

Many practitioners do both: earlier hours as one entry for everything before TherapyLock, and individual appointments from the day they joined.

How hours are counted

A 50 minute session counts as one full therapeutic hour, in line with the usual professional convention. Client hours and supervision hours are shown separately, and you can download a summary for your accreditation paperwork at any time.

If something's not right

• The dashboard session total looks low. Almost always a past appointment still marked Scheduled. The calendar's Needs Action count gathers them for you; work through it and the totals correct themselves
• A retention warning appeared on a client you added. Check their therapy dates. An end date in the distant past can mean the record is already near, or past, its retention period, which is the system working as it should

Related articles

• Adding a new client

• The client record

• Your appointment calendar

• Your practice documents

Still Need Help?

If you have any other questions about TherapyLock, our support team is here to help.

Email us at support@counsellingtutor.com and we will be happy to assist.