Leaving SimplePractice: What to Export, What Breaks, and How to Move a Group Practice

SimplePractice is the most widely used practice platform for US therapists, and the reasons clinicians give for leaving it are consistent across reviews: no live phone support, clients asked for card details before the portal works, account freezes, billing that continued after cancellation and updates that broke working features. Deciding to leave is the easy part. The hard part is the move itself, because so much of what a therapy practice runs on lives in the client-facing layer that does not export. This guide covers what to export, what breaks, how to keep client access working and the order a group practice moves in; the SimplePractice alternative page covers what you move to.

Before you give notice

Three things before anything else.

1. Export everything while you still can. Run every export the platform offers and open the files. Reviews describe accounts frozen during disputes, so the copy on your own drive comes first.
2. Finalize open notes. Unsigned notes are the item most often lost in a move. Set a date by which every clinician signs what is open.
3. Check the notice period and the retention terms, so you know how long the old account stays readable after you cancel.

What to export

SimplePractice exports are run from the account settings and per client. The list to work through:

Data	How it comes out	Check
Clients and contacts	CSV	Count matches the client list
Appointments	CSV, past and future	Future appointments present with clinician and type
Notes	PDF per client	Date, author and signature on each
Documents and uploads	Original files per client	Open a sample
Intake and consent	Completed forms as PDF	One per client who completed them
Invoices and superbills	PDF and CSV	Open balances listed
Insurance details	In the client export	Payer and member ID present

The PDFs are for the record. The CSVs are what the new system imports. Keep both, in a folder per clinician, and keep a copy off the laptop that will be wiped.

What breaks

Everything that lives in the client portal stays behind. In order of how much it hurts:

• Portal logins. Clients have SimplePractice accounts. Those accounts do not move; the new system issues its own access, and clients need to be told how.
• Cards on file and autopay. Stored cards cannot be transferred between processors. Clients who pay by card re-enter it, once, in the new system, with their consent recorded again.
• Recurring appointments. The weekly slot a client has held for two years is a series in the old system. The export lists the occurrences; the new system has to recreate the series so it keeps running.
• Reminder settings. Timing, channel and wording per appointment type are rebuilt, which is also the moment to fix what was wrong with them.
• Telehealth links. Clients with a saved video link need the new one.
• Measurement and outcome tracking. Scores export as data; the charts do not. The new system rebuilds them from the scores.
• Calendar sync. Each clinician reconnects their Google or Outlook calendar from the new system.

None of this is a reason to stay. It is a list to work through, and most of it is an afternoon per clinician.

Keeping client access working

The client-facing layer is where a move is felt, so plan the message before the move. Two weeks out, every active client gets a note on the channel they use: the practice is changing systems on a named date, their appointments carry over, reminders will come from a new number, and they will receive a link to the new portal with nothing to set up.

With Capra, that is literally what happens: the patient portal opens from a secure link sent by text, WhatsApp or email, with no password and no card on file unless the practice requires one. A client who had a SimplePractice login receives the link and is in. Clients who prefer email keep email; clients who have asked never to be messaged are flagged and are not.

The reminder that goes out the day before their first appointment after the move names the practice, the clinician and the new reply number, so a reply does not go to a dead inbox.

The order for a group practice

A solo practice can move over a weekend. A group of six or sixteen moves in order:

1. Admin export. The practice owner or manager runs the full export and the per-clinician folders.
2. Set up the new system. Clinicians, appointment types, rooms or video, reminder rules, forms and the portal, before any client data goes in.
3. Pilot with one clinician. Their caseload is imported, their recurring series recreated, their clients messaged, and they run a real week of sessions in the new system while the rest of the practice stays on the old one.
4. Fix what the pilot found. A field mapped wrong, a reminder worded badly, a form missing. Cheaper to find with one caseload than with sixteen.
5. Move the rest in waves. Two or three clinicians at a time, each with a finalized-notes date, an import, a client message and a first week.
6. Parallel run. For two weeks, new bookings go into the new system and the old one is read-only for reference.
7. Cutover. A dated evening after which nothing is written to the old system; a final delta export of anything that changed since the wave imports; a count check: clients, future appointments, open invoices.
8. Close. Keep the old account readable for its retention period, take a final archive export, then cancel in writing and keep the confirmation.

A practice that follows the order loses no sessions and no notes. The usual total is three to four weeks from export to close for a mid-sized group.

Three mistakes to avoid

Canceling before the export is checked. The copy on your drive is the only one you control. Open the files first.

Moving everyone on the same day. A single cutover for a whole group turns every small mapping error into sixteen clinicians with the same problem on the same Monday.

Telling clients after the move. A reminder from an unknown number, with no warning, gets ignored or reported. The message goes out before the first new reminder, not after.

Insurance, claims and superbills

Practices that bill insurance have one more list. Claims in flight at the move stay with the old system until they are paid or denied, so keep the old account readable for its retention period and work the outstanding claims from there rather than re-entering them. Client insurance details come across in the client export; check the payer and member ID on a sample before go-live. Superbill history exports as PDFs per client and goes on the record as documents, so a client who asks for a past superbill gets it from the new system without a trip to the old one. Eligibility checks and any clearinghouse connection are rebuilt in the new system during onboarding, which is also the moment to confirm which payers you still bill.

How Capra runs the move

Your onboarding lead takes the SimplePractice export of clients, appointments, notes, documents and invoices, maps it into Capra field by field and checks the import with you before go-live. Scheduling, reminders and messaging are live within a few days; integrations are built for you during onboarding. Support is human, in UK and UAE hours, from a named team, and the onboarding lead stays your contact after go-live. The therapists page covers the setup for a counselling or therapy practice, the patient portal page covers what clients see, and a demo will walk through the move with your group's size and caseloads in mind.