If you're switching to Cliniko from TM3, then here are the details you’ll need in order to transfer your data into your Cliniko account!
Please note that this data transfer service is a process that we will work on with you—not something that you'll need to do yourself. Please don't import spreadsheets or manually add any information into your Cliniko account before the transfer, as duplication will result when your data comes across from TM3.
The very first step is booking your transfer date! We sometimes book months in advance, so we strongly recommend you book as soon as you can to avoid further delays:
Once you've done that, please read through the guide below. It's important to review each section thoroughly, as it outlines your role in the transfer, and what we do for you.
The guide is broken into the following sections:
Getting familiar with Cliniko
For a smooth transition, please ensure that your team has had an opportunity to play around with Cliniko and are familiar with it. The trial is unrestricted, so all features are available to set up and become familiar with. You can change your subscription level as required while trialing, which will let you add more practitioners!
In case it's useful, these training guides might come in handy:
All of our support articles and guides can be found on our help site, too! You can quickly search for anything you’d like help with right here.
All users are encouraged to contact our support team with any questions. We're easiest reached from within Cliniko by clicking Help on the blue sidebar, and clicking Chat with us! If you'd prefer email, you can reach us at support@cliniko.com.
Getting your data from TM3
TM3 offer a full account export upon cancellation of your account. This export contains all the data we need to import your patients, appointments, files and so on, into Cliniko. The first step is to contact TM3 to let them know you intend to cancel your account, so that the options for cancelling and extracting your data can be enabled for you.
Once this has been enabled for you, you can commence your TM3 account cancellation and data extraction. You'll find more detail in their help article here:
Note that any data entered into TM3 after this export will not be transferred to Cliniko, as it won't be included in the exported data. This data will need to be noted and manually entered into Cliniko after the transfer has been completed.
Your TM3 export may be quite large depending on the volume of data involved, and generating the export may take hours or even days. Once your export is ready and you have downloaded it to your computer, please zip the tmBase folder. On Windows, right-click the folder, select Send to... then select Compressed (zipped) folder.
Once you have your exported data, please upload it to your preferred cloud storage service (Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc), and share with us from there. Contact us for more info.
At a minimum, please perform your export and upload it to your chosen storage option the day before your scheduled transfer, so that we have time to download your exported database. It's important to have all these steps completed prior to the transfer, as we still require time on the day of transfer to load and prepare your data in our system to then be written into your Cliniko account.
🚨 IMPORTANT: If you have more than 10 years or 10,000 patients of data to transfer, please let us know. This is absolutely fine, but the transfer may take more than a day, and extra allowances will need to be made for this volume of data.
Setting up your Cliniko account
There's a bit of setup required in Cliniko prior to the transfer. These are things that we can't necessarily determine or transfer from TM3, or settings that are specific to Cliniko.
Please ensure the following things are set up as soon as possible:
All required users and practitioners are created,
All sites/locations of your business are set up as Cliniko business locations,
Your time zones have been set correctly (to ensure that appointments get transferred to the right spots), and
Mobile phone numbers have been added to the admin user's account so that we can authenticate prior to transfer.
Other items that are not required prior to transfer, but are not transferred and will need to be set up manually are:
All treatment note templates are created,
All letter templates are created,
Past practitioners
When we transfer appointments, we will need a practitioner assigned to the appointment. This is a little complicated for instances where the practitioner is no longer with you and therefore not in Cliniko. In these cases, please let us know whether you would prefer to assign the appointments to:
A generic ‘Former practitioner’ that you create in Cliniko,
Another active practitioner in Cliniko, or
Exclude them entirely.
Alternatively, you may create all your specific members of staff (past and present) in Cliniko, and we’ll assign all appointments correctly. You can set those former practitioners as inactive, as your Cliniko subscription price is based on the total number of active practitioners.
Business locations
When we transfer appointments, we will need a business location assigned to the appointment. If you have appointments relating to a TM3 location that is not set up in Cliniko, please let us know whether you would prefer to assign the appointments to:
A generic business location that you create in Cliniko,
Another active business location already in Cliniko, or
Exclude them entirely.
Alternatively, you may create all your business locations (past and present) in Cliniko, and we’ll assign all appointments correctly. You can set those former locations as inactive following the transfer.
File attachments
Finally, Cliniko limits the volume of patient attachments in trial accounts. To remove this limit, please add your billing details into your account. Your free trial will continue until completion, and your credit card will not be charged until your trial period has expired.
You can quickly search for and find our guides and help articles to assist you with the setup process on our help site, here.
If you'd like any assistance with getting set up, feel free to contact us! Even if you just have a quick question that you’d like an answer for, we are easiest reached from within Cliniko by clicking Help on the blue sidebar, and clicking Chat with us! You can also click the chat "bubble" at the bottom right corner of this page.
What do we transfer?
Note that no data is removed from TM3 in the transfer process. Data is copied to your Cliniko account. The types of data that are transferred are not customisable.
Transfer to Cliniko will include the following from your TM3 export, and will appear as described in Cliniko:
Alerts
Class types (appointment types in Cliniko)
Consultancy types (billable items in Cliniko)
Stock (products in Cliniko)
Contacts/patient groups/insurers (contacts in Cliniko)
Appointments
Classes and their attendees
Patients/customers
Patient extended notes (patient extra information in Cliniko)
Red flags (medical alerts in Cliniko)
Case notes
Desktop cases will be regenerated from your TM3 data files, and uploaded as PDF patient files in Cliniko
Web cases are supplied by TM3 as PDF already, and will be uploaded as they are
Files/uploads (patient attached files in Cliniko)
Holidays, meetings and calendar memos (unavailable blocks in Cliniko)
Note that inactive patients in TM3 will be transferred as archived patients in Cliniko.
Transfers can take anywhere from a few hours to a day, depending on the volume of data being transferred. Once we’ve finished transfer, you will need to review your appointment types within Cliniko and finish setting them up (assign practitioners to them, assign colours, relate billable items and treatment note templates, assign reminder and confirmation templates).
Prior to the data transfer, please avoid performing any data imports for:
Patients
Products
Contacts
Appointment types
Billable items
We will import all of these as part of the TM3 transfer. If that data is already in Cliniko, it will be duplicated.
What don’t we transfer?
Unfortunately, all financial details are excluded from transfer. There is not a way to import financial data into Cliniko. This includes:
Invoices
Payments
Credits
Account statements
Appointment invoice/payment statuses
If you'd like to record prior payment history or outstanding debts in Cliniko, you can create an opening balance for those patients. This is not considered revenue and will not affect Cliniko's reporting.
In addition, the following items are not transferrable and must be set up manually where needed:
Users and practitioners, practitioner reference numbers
Businesses locations and settings
Expenses and stock sales
3rd party app integrations
Communication records
Waitlist data
Existing reports
Letters and letter templates
Patient forms and form templates
Communication templates (email and SMS)
Information that we'll need from you
When you book a transfer date, you'll be sent a confirmation email which includes a link to a secure electronic form. This form is where the below information is collected from you. If you miss the confirmation email, another link to the same form will be sent in a reminder email closer to your transfer date. Please let us know if you do not receive these emails.
Do you have any practitioners in TM3 who are inactive?
If so, we will need to determine what to do with appointments assigned to them. There are a couple of options here:
We can leave those appointments behind and not transfer them into Cliniko.
You can create all your inactive practitioners in Cliniko, and we can assign all appointments to the correct practitioner. You can make these practitioners inactive in Cliniko prior to transfer, so they do not contribute to your subscription plan.
You can elect one or more other practitioners in Cliniko to assign those appointments to (e.g. use an existing practitioner, or create one practitioner named “Old practitioner”, or similar). You'll just need to tell us which practitioner/s in TM3 you want mapped to which practitioner/s in Cliniko.
Do you have any business locations in TM3 that are inactive?
If so, we will need to determine what to do with appointments assigned to them. There are a couple of options here:
We can leave those appointments behind and not transfer them into Cliniko.
You can create all your inactive business locations in Cliniko, and we can assign all appointments to the correct locations. You can make these locations inactive in Cliniko after the transfer has completed.
You can elect an existing location in Cliniko to assign those appointments to (e.g. use an existing location, or create a location named “Old business”, or similar). You'll just need to tell us which location/s in TM3 you want mapped to which location/s in Cliniko.
Accessing your Cliniko account
In order to access your new Cliniko account and write your data to it, we’ll need your Cliniko URL and an API key.
Cliniko URL
Your URL can be found in your browser address bar when you're logged in to Cliniko, and will look something like https://your-clinic.au2.cliniko.com. This is required so that we may be sure we’re transferring data to the correct account.
Cliniko API key
Please log in to your Cliniko account to generate the API key. You'll need to be logged in as an administrative user who is also a practitioner so that the API key generated has the required data access permissions. Please also see our guide on generating a Cliniko API key.
To have the correct permissions, the API key must belong to a user who is also a practitioner. Please do not give us an API key for an administrator that is not also a practitioner.
Your API keys are like passwords, and must be handled with care. It's very important that this information is transmitted to us securely. When you book a transfer date, you'll be sent a confirmation email which includes a link to a secure electronic form. This form is where you can safely communicate your API keys and other information to us. If you miss the confirmation email, another link to the same form will be sent in a reminder email closer to your transfer date. Please let us know if you do not receive these emails.
Administrator mobile numbers
We’ll also need to do some verification of an account administrator to get the final go-ahead to access the account and load data, so please ensure a mobile numbers are included in user's profiles so we can send a verification code to the required user.
On the day of the transfer
As a reminder, uploading your TM3 export will take time, and transfer into Cliniko cannot start until that export is uploaded to us. If this process is only able to start on the morning of transfer, your actual transfer may not commence until much later in the day, or on a later day. To avoid delays, please schedule your TM3 data export and upload to us at least one day prior to your transfer.
Please ensure you are contactable on the day of the transfer. While we shouldn’t need to hassle you much on that day, we may need to contact you if some of the required information or set up is incomplete. If we can’t get in touch with you, we can wait, but this may result in your transfer being delayed.
Transfers are usually performed between 8am and 3pm AEDT, Mon-Fri. We’ll get started on the morning of your booking and let you know when we are done. If it looks like things will take longer than the booked day, we’ll be sure to reach out and keep you informed of the progress.
When the transfer is completed, you’ll be able to use your data within Cliniko immediately.
If there’s anything you’d like to confirm or discuss prior to transfer, please do let us know - we’re here to help!
The final checklist
Having all of this done before the transfer takes place is super important. Please be sure that each item on these lists has been checked off prior to your transfer date!
Please be sure that you have completed the following prior to transfer:
The transfer date has been booked
Your TM3 account export has been arranged (see TM3's guide here)
Your TM3 account export has been uploaded to your chosen online storage, and a share link given to the Cliniko team
Completed the secure form to give us your Cliniko URL and API key (see instructions), and the answers to your ‘How do you use TM3’ questions (see questions)
On the Cliniko side of things:
[Required] Practitioners have been created, both active and inactive (see guide)
[Required] All administrator user accounts have mobile numbers
[Required] Business locations have been created, both active and inactive (see guide)
[Required] You have added a payment method to your Cliniko subscription, to lift the file upload limit (see guide)
After transfer, these items will need attending to:
We know that transferring from another system is a big deal, and we want to help make the process as easy as possible for you. If you have any questions on anything at all, please reach out to us. We're always available to help!