How to Switch from TechMan to My Garage CRM

The single biggest reason garages stay on software they have outgrown is the fear of moving. It feels risky: what if we lose customer histories, what if the team cannot cope, what if we are down for a day at the worst possible time.

In practice, moving from TechMan to My Garage CRM is far less dramatic than that fear suggests, for one simple reason: you never have to switch off TechMan before My Garage CRM is ready. Because My Garage CRM gives you a genuine 28-day free trial, you set the new system up, import your data, and run both side by side until your team is comfortable. Nothing goes dark, nothing is deleted, and you only cancel TechMan when you are certain. This guide walks through the whole process step by step, with realistic timings and honest answers to the worries owners actually have. Read it once end to end so you know what is coming, then keep it open as a checklist while you work through the move, and you will find the whole thing calmer and more predictable than the leap it feels like from the outside.

A little preparation makes the move painless. Have these ready before you begin.

Six steps take you from TechMan to fully live on My Garage CRM. None of them require you to stop trading.

Step 1. Export your data from TechMan

Start by exporting your customer and vehicle records from TechMan to a CSV file. This is the part owners worry about most, and it is the easiest: your data is yours, and a CSV is a plain, portable file that any modern system can read. Keep a copy safe as your backup. You are not changing anything in TechMan at this stage, just taking a snapshot to bring across.

Step 2. Start your free trial

Create a My Garage CRM account and begin the 28-day free trial. No card is required, so there is no commitment and no clock ticking on your wallet. You now have a full, working system to set up in your own time while TechMan carries on as normal.

Step 3. Import customers and vehicles

Bring your CSV into My Garage CRM so every customer and vehicle, with its history, is in place. This is what makes the switch feel seamless to your customers: when they call, their record and service history are already there. Spot-check a handful of records after import to confirm everything mapped across cleanly.

Step 4. Set up staff, MOT reminders and templates

Add your team with role-based access so each person sees what they should. Configure MOT reminders so the automation that keeps customers coming back is running from the start, and recreate your invoice and estimate templates in the designer so your branding stays consistent. If you use the DVLA registration lookup, this is where you will see it autofill vehicle details across the add-customer, add-job and add-estimate forms.

Step 5. Run both systems in parallel

For one to two weeks, run My Garage CRM alongside TechMan. Book new jobs into My Garage CRM, let reception and technicians get used to it, and keep TechMan as your safety net. This parallel period is the secret to a stress-free switch: there is no leap of faith, just a gradual handover as confidence grows.

Step 6. Go live and cancel TechMan

Once the team is comfortable and you have confirmed everything works the way you run your garage, switch over fully and give notice on TechMan for the end of its term. That is it, you are migrated, with your history intact and your monthly cost lower.

Most single-site garages complete the move within about two weeks of steady, part-time effort, without pausing normal work.

Indicative for a single-site garage. Multi-site moves take a little longer.

The parallel period is where confidence is built. Work through this short checklist on real jobs so nothing surprises you after go-live.

If each of these feels right, you are ready. If any of them raises a question, that is exactly what the parallel run is for, sort it while TechMan is still there as your safety net, not after you have switched off.

There is no single right way to migrate. Pick the approach that matches your team's confidence and your available time.

Multi-site and larger garages

If you run more than one site or a bigger team, the same principles apply but the timeline stretches a little. Migrate one site first as a pilot, prove the workflow and iron out any site-specific quirks, then roll the pattern out to the others with your first site's staff as internal champions. Staged rollouts like this keep risk low and mean each location goes live only when it is genuinely ready, rather than everyone switching on the same day. Because the free trial gives you room to pilot without paying, you can prove the whole approach before committing the wider business.

The things that make your garage yours all come across.

A quick like-for-like on annual cost at a typical mid tier. The migration itself is free during the trial.

Published mid-tier pricing. Verify TechMan's current figure before deciding.

Staying on a pricier system has a real, recurring cost that compounds every year you delay. On these figures the annual difference is around £600, and because the migration happens inside the free trial, there is no switching fee eating into that saving. The question is less whether you can afford to move and more whether you can justify not looking, given the move is low-risk and reversible right up until you cancel.

Will we lose data?

No. Your records are exported as a file you keep, then imported into My Garage CRM. Nothing is deleted from TechMan in the process, so even in the unlikely event of a hiccup, your original data is untouched. Spot-checking after import gives you final peace of mind.

Will we have downtime?

No. This is the whole point of the parallel run. TechMan keeps working while you set up and learn My Garage CRM, so there is never a moment where you cannot book a job or raise an invoice.

Will the team struggle to learn it?

Reception and technicians are the people who feel a system change most, which is exactly why the parallel run matters: they learn gradually on real jobs with the old system as a backstop, rather than being thrown in cold. Most teams are comfortable within days.

Are we locked in if we do not like it?

The free trial means you can evaluate fully before paying, and your data remains exportable, so you are never trapped. That reversibility is what makes trying it a genuinely low-risk decision.

The first fortnight on any new system is about getting comfortable; the value comes in the weeks after. Once you are settled, lean into the automation: let MOT reminders run so customers return without you chasing, use outbound calls and call history to win back lapsed customers, and use the reporting to see where time and money actually go. If you also sell cars, set up the car sales module so your forecourt and workshop live in one place. The aim is not just to replace TechMan like for like, but to use the move as a moment to tighten how the whole garage runs.

Almost every garage that switches says the same thing afterwards: I wish I had done it sooner. Here is why the delay happens, and why it rarely pays off.

Inertia is powerful in a busy workshop. The current system works well enough, the team knows it, and there is never a quiet moment to take on a change, so the review keeps slipping. Meanwhile the higher monthly fee keeps going out, the features you wanted keep not arriving, and the admin friction you have learned to live with keeps costing small amounts of time every day. None of it is dramatic enough to force action, which is exactly why it drags on for years. The irony is that the move itself is the low-risk part: with a free trial and a parallel run, you can evaluate a replacement with zero downtime and no spend, and simply walk away if it is not better. The genuine risk is not switching, it is a bad switch done in a panic with no safety net, and this whole guide is designed to remove that risk entirely. Set aside a couple of hours to start the trial, and you will know within a fortnight whether staying or moving is the right call, with real evidence rather than guesswork.

Once you are live, a little structure in the first month locks in the value of the move.

A system change should be invisible to your customers, or better still, an improvement they notice.

Because your customer records and service history come across in full, there is usually nothing your customers need to do and nothing they will notice going wrong. When they ring, their history is already on screen; when their MOT is due, the reminder still lands. If your reminders or invoices will look slightly different after the move, a short, friendly heads-up, on your website, a text, or a note at the counter, turns a non-event into a positive: you are investing in better systems to serve them faster. There is no need to announce a migration in progress or to warn of disruption, because with the parallel run there is no disruption to warn about. Handle it quietly and confidently, and the main thing customers experience is quicker service, cleaner paperwork and reminders that keep arriving on time. That continuity is one of the strongest reasons to migrate carefully rather than rush, and it is exactly what this process is built to protect.