Importing and Exporting Data

15-20 minutes

Introduction

Whether you're backing up your salon data, responding to a customer's data request under GDPR, preparing reports for your accountant, or migrating from another system — Luminate gives you several ways to get data in and out. This guide covers the Data Export tool for full salon and individual customer exports, report exports to CSV and PDF, transaction document downloads, and the bulk import process for new salons.

Who this is for: Salon owners and administrators who need to export data for backup, compliance, accounting, or analysis.

What you'll learn:

How to create full salon and individual customer exports
Choosing between JSON and CSV formats
Exporting reports to CSV and PDF
Downloading transaction invoices and receipts
Understanding the bulk data import process

Time to complete: 15-20 minutes

Prerequisites

Before you begin:

You must be logged in as an Owner or Admin (the export-reports permission is required)
Access to the Settings page (for data exports) and Reports section (for report exports)
A web browser that can download files

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the Data Export Tool

The Data Export tool lets you export all your salon data or an individual customer's data as a downloadable ZIP file.

Click Settings in the sidebar
Select the Data tab
The Data tab is split into two sub-tabs: Exports and Data Retention. It opens on Exports — that's the one you want here. (Data Retention is the automatic-anonymisation policy, covered in Tutorial 11.3.)
On the Exports sub-tab you'll see two sections: Create Export at the top and Export History below

The Data tab in Salon Settings, showing its Exports and Data Retention sub-tabs with the Create Export card below

Step 2: Create a Full Salon Export

A full salon export packages all your data into a single ZIP file — ideal for backups or migrating to a new salon.

Under Export Scope, select Full Salon
Under Export Format, choose your format:
- JSON — Structured data that can be re-imported into another Luminate salon. Best for backups and migration.
- CSV — Spreadsheet-friendly files that open in Excel or Google Sheets. Best for analysis or sharing with your accountant.
Click Start Export
The export begins processing in the background — you can navigate away and come back later

What's included in a full salon export:

Data Type	What's Exported
Staff Levels	Names, colours, sort order, active status
Staff	Names, compensation details, rates, commission bands, monthly targets, roster settings and working days, hire dates, qualifications
Customers	Contact information, preferences, allergies, referral source, badges, marketing consent, account credit balance and history
Tags	Names, types, colours
Services	Pricing, durations, commission rates, staff level pricing variants, deposit rules, online-booking availability, colour-service grams allowance
Products	SKU, barcode, pricing, stock levels, expiry dates, and the full colour catalogue — brand, line, shade family, shade code, product role, gram tracking and gram stock
Appointments	Times, statuses, deposits, consultation notes, cancellation reasons
Transactions	Amounts, line items, payment methods, linked appointments
Shifts	Staff schedules with break durations
Time Blocks	Non-appointment calendar blocks — holidays, training, meetings — with their categories
Colour Tests	Test results, medical/safety notes, consent records and the signed signatures (JSON exports only)
Gift Vouchers	Values, codes, recipient details, expiry dates

Only one full salon export can run at a time. If an export is already in progress, the Start Export button will be disabled with a message explaining why.

Step 3: Create an Individual Customer Export

Individual customer exports are designed for GDPR Subject Access Requests — when a customer asks for a copy of all data you hold about them.

Under Export Scope, select Individual Customer
A search box appears — type the customer's name, email, or phone to find them
Select the customer from the results
Choose your format (JSON or CSV)
Click Start Export

What's included in a customer export:

Data Type	What's Exported
Customer Record	Full profile, contact details, preferences, badges, consent, account credit balance and history
Appointments	All appointments for this customer
Transactions	All transactions for this customer
Colour Tests	All colour test records for this customer
Gift Vouchers	All vouchers purchased by this customer

You can also start a customer export directly from the customer's profile page: find Export Customer Data and click Export Data. It links straight to Settings > Data > Exports with that customer already selected. The shortcut only appears for Owners and Admins, because only they can open the Data tab.

Step 4: Track Export Progress

Exports run in the background and you can monitor their progress in the Export History table.

After starting an export, scroll down to the Export History section
Each export shows a status badge:
- Pending — Waiting to start
- Processing — Currently running (shows which data type is being exported and a percentage)
- Completed — Ready to download
- Failed — Something went wrong (hover over the error icon for details)
The page updates automatically — no need to refresh

Step 5: Download Your Export

Once an export completes:

Find the export in the Export History table
Click the Download button
A ZIP file downloads to your browser's default download location

File naming: Downloads are named automatically:

luminate-salon-export-your-salon-name-2026-04-03.zip (full salon)
luminate-customer-export-your-salon-name-2026-04-03.zip (individual customer)

Important: Completed exports are available for download for 24 hours. After that, the file is automatically deleted. The Expires column shows how much time remains.

Step 6: Manage Export History

The Export History table shows all your exports with their type, format, status, creation date, file size, and expiration time.

To delete an export:

Click the bin icon next to the export
Confirm deletion in the dialog that appears
The export and its file are permanently removed

Step 7: Understanding JSON vs CSV Exports

	JSON	CSV
Best for	Backups, migration to another salon	Spreadsheets, accounting, analysis
Re-importable	Yes — can be imported into a new Luminate salon	No
Opens in	Text editors, JSON viewers	Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers
Nested data	Included naturally (e.g., transaction items inside transactions)	Separate files (e.g., `transactions.csv` + `transaction_items.csv`)
File structure	One file per entity type + manifest	One or more files per entity type + manifest
Signed signatures	Included on colour test records	Left out — a signature image is far too long for a spreadsheet cell and would open truncated

Both formats produce a ZIP file containing your data files plus a manifest.json that lists what's included and record counts.

Dates and times in both formats are written in your salon's own timezone, not UTC — so a late-evening appointment stays on the day you'd expect rather than sliding into the previous date.

Step 8: Export Reports to CSV or PDF

Individual reports can be exported directly from the Reports section — useful for sending specific data to your accountant or creating periodic records.

Click Reports in the sidebar
Choose a report from one of the grouped categories:
- Financial Reports — Daily Revenue, Revenue by Payment Type, Accounts Receivable, Gift Vouchers, Account Credit, VAT Report, Colour Bar Performance
- Customer Reports — Top Customers
- Staff Reports — Staff Performance, Staff Commission, Hours Worked, Payroll, Leave Report
- Messaging Reports — SMS Usage
- Inventory Reports — Colour Stock & Reorder

The Reports landing page with its grouped categories of available reports

Set the date range using the date selector
Review the data on screen
Click the Export button near the table heading
Choose your format:
- Export as CSV — Opens in Excel or Google Sheets
- Export as PDF — Formatted document for printing or sharing

Every report offers both formats, and both do what they say — pick CSV when you want to work with the figures in a spreadsheet, PDF when you want something to print, file or send on.

Report	Data Included	Formats
Daily Revenue	Date, transactions, service revenue, product revenue, subtotal, discounts, tax, revenue, tips	CSV, PDF
Revenue by Payment Type	Payment method, transactions, collected, refunded, net amount, % of total	CSV, PDF
Accounts Receivable	Customer name, email, phone, unpaid transactions, outstanding balance, oldest invoice, days overdue	CSV, PDF
Gift Vouchers	Code, status, initial value, current balance, value forfeited, customer, recipient name/email, issued/expiry dates, transaction ID	CSV, PDF
Account Credit	Name, balance, last movement, number of movements — every customer currently holding credit	CSV, PDF
VAT Report	Period, transactions, net sales, tax amount, gross sales	CSV, PDF
Colour Bar Performance	Colourist summary (formulas finalised, bowls re-weighed, reweigh coverage, additional billed, colour cost); per-charge detail (date, customer, service, overage grams, rule applied, cost, charged, margin)	CSV, PDF
Top Customers	Customer name, email, phone, total spend, visits, average spend, last visit, first visit	CSV, PDF
Staff Performance	Staff name, role, transactions, items, service revenue, product revenue, total revenue, tips, commission	CSV, PDF
Staff Commission	Staff member, compensation type, commission band breakdown, and per-transaction commission detail (date, type, description, quantity, subtotal, rate, commission earned)	CSV, PDF
Hours Worked	Staff name, role, shift count, scheduled hours, working hours, break hours	CSV, PDF
Payroll	Staff Member, Compensation Type, Scheduled Hours, Actual Hours, Service Revenue, Product Revenue, Total Revenue, Base Pay, Commission, Tips, Gross Pay, Adjustments, Net Pay, Status	CSV, PDF
Leave Report	Staff member, role, allowance, used, pending, remaining days, plus breakdown by leave type	CSV, PDF
SMS Usage	Date, type, reason, SMS type, amount, balance, customer (individual view); or date, credits added/used, net change, transactions (daily view)	CSV, PDF
Colour Stock & Reorder	Brand, product line, shade, product, role, tube size, stock on hand, current tubes, average daily usage, days to stockout, reorder status	CSV, PDF

Some reports offer different views that affect what's exported. For example, the SMS Usage report can be viewed as individual entries or daily totals — the export matches whichever view you're currently looking at.

Report export files are named with the report type and date range, e.g., daily-revenue-2026-01-01-to-2026-03-31.csv.

Payroll is the exception. Because salons pay staff from these files, the payroll export names itself after the period rather than a filter range, and marks anything not yet locked:

A plain calendar month gets the short name — payroll-2026-08.csv
Any other shape (a 26 Jul – 25 Aug cycle, or a short bridge period) carries its explicit dates — payroll-2026-08-20260726-20260825.csv
A period that hasn't been finalised gets a -DRAFT suffix, and every row carries a Status column

That combination is deliberate: two overlapping draft periods can both be exported, and the DRAFT marker is what stops someone paying the overlap twice. Check for it before you pay from a file.

Step 9: Download Transaction Documents

Individual transactions can be downloaded as PDFs in two formats. When viewing a transaction, you'll see tabs along the top: Details, Invoice, Receipt (plus a Rebook tab on completed transactions that are linked to a customer).

A transaction's Invoice tab, with the Download and Print buttons in the top-right

Invoice (A4 format):

Go to Transactions in the sidebar
Find the transaction in the list and click View
Click the Invoice tab
Click the Download button in the top-right (or Print to send straight to a printer)

Receipt (thermal printer format, 80mm width):

Open the transaction as above
Click the Receipt tab
Click the Download button in the top-right (or Print to send straight to a printer)

Both formats include salon details, customer information, itemised pricing, and payment breakdown. Files are named invoice-{transaction number}.pdf or receipt-{transaction number}.pdf.

Step 10: Bulk Data Import (Migration)

If you're migrating to Luminate from another salon management system, bulk data import is available. This is handled by the Luminate support team.

What can be imported:

Staff profiles and levels, including commission bands, monthly targets, roster settings and working days
Customer records (including preferences, badges, and account credit — a customer's credit balance carries over as a single opening-balance adjustment in their new credit history)
Tags
Services (with their deposit rules, online-booking availability and colour-service settings) and products
The colour catalogue — brands, lines, shade families, shade codes, product roles and gram stock, so the Colour Bar works from day one
Appointments
Transactions (with items and payments)
Shifts/roster data and time blocks
Colour test records, including the signed consent signatures
Gift vouchers

Everything beyond the basics is optional. A simpler export from another system — one that has no colour catalogue, no commission bands, no deposit rules — imports perfectly happily; anything missing simply takes Luminate's default. Two things to know about those defaults, because they are deliberately permissive: a service arrives bookable online and deposit-free, and a staff member arrives on the roster. If your old system had services you never published online, or staff who never take appointments, check those settings after the import.

Duplicate customer email addresses are fine. Old systems accumulate them — a family sharing one inbox, the same person entered twice years apart. Luminate doesn't require customer email addresses to be unique and the validation pass deliberately doesn't check, so messy source data comes across intact rather than forcing you to clean it up first. Staff email addresses are the exception: those must be unique, because each one becomes a login.

Phone numbers — don't reformat them before you send them. This trips up migrations more than anything else on this page, so it's worth being precise.

Luminate stores phone numbers exactly as supplied and never rewrites them, in either direction. When it comes to sending an SMS, it expands whatever it holds into a full international number using the country recorded against that person. All of these forms are understood and dial the same number:

Form	Example
National	`7781409105`
With trunk prefix	`07781409105`
Country-prefixed	`447781409105`
Full international	`+447781409105`

The country defaults to the UK when it isn't stated. That's the one thing to watch. Both customers and staff carry an optional two-letter country code (GB, GG, JE, IE, US…) alongside the number, and if your export doesn't supply one, every number is treated as British. An Irish or US number written in national form then gets dialled as a UK number and the message fails silently. If your salon has any non-UK numbers, either include the country code column or write those numbers in full international form with the + and country prefix — either works.

Because of all this, there's no need to bulk-reformat your numbers into a single style first, and doing so carries real risk: a rewrite mangles the numbers that were already correct. Send them as they are.

The validation pass reports a count of numbers that don't look valid for their country — useful for catching a digit dropped by the old system. It's advisory and never blocks the import, deliberately: the underlying phone library misclassifies some legitimate numbers, notably Jersey and Guernsey mobiles that share UK number ranges. Treat it as a list worth eyeballing, not a list of failures.

How it works:

Contact support at hello@luminate.salon with details about your current system
The team will help you prepare your data as a ZIP of JSON files — exactly the format produced by a JSON Full Salon export, so a JSON export from one Luminate salon imports directly into another
A validation pass runs first (a dry run) to check every record before anything is written
The final import is executed inside a single database transaction — it either succeeds completely or rolls back entirely, leaving no partial data

Important: Imports require a fresh salon with no existing data (other than the owner account). Plan your migration before you start entering data manually.

Step 11: Export Permissions

Role	Data Exports	Report Exports	Transaction PDFs
Owner	Yes	Yes	Yes
Admin	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manager	No	No (can view reports but not export)	Yes
Staff	No	No	Own transactions only
Receptionist	No	No	Yes

Data exports live inside Settings, and only Owners and Admins can open Settings at all — so if you can't find the Data tab, that's why. Ask an Owner or Admin to create the export for you.

Report exports follow the same permission. The Export button only appears for roles that hold export-reports, so a Manager opening the Daily Revenue report — or a Receptionist on the two reports they can reach — won't see it at all. The report is still theirs to read on screen; ask an Owner or Admin to run the export.

Common Pitfalls

"I don't see the Data tab in Settings"

You need the Owner or Admin role. Salon Settings is closed to Managers, Staff and Receptionists entirely, so the Data tab isn't reachable for them. Ask an Owner or Admin to create the export for you.

"There's no Export button on this report"

Two things hide it. Only Owners and Admins hold the export-reports permission, so other roles can read a report on screen but won't see the button — ask an Owner or Admin to run the export. It's also hidden when the report has no rows for the range you've selected, since there'd be nothing to put in the file; widen the date range (or clear any search or filter) until data appears and it comes back.

"My export failed"

Hover over the red error icon in the Export History table to see what went wrong. In most cases, you can simply try again by creating a new export. If the problem persists, contact support.

"The download link expired"

Completed exports are only available for 24 hours. You'll need to create a new export — the old file has been automatically cleaned up.

"The CSV looks jumbled in Excel"

This can happen if Excel doesn't recognise the delimiter. Try:

Open Excel first (don't double-click the CSV)
Go to Data > From Text/CSV
Select the file and set the delimiter to "Comma"

"Numbers are formatted as text in my CSV"

Excel sometimes treats numbers as text. Select the column, right-click, choose Format Cells, and select Number or Currency as appropriate.

"I can't start a new full salon export"

Only one full salon export can run at a time. Wait for the current export to complete (or fail), then try again. Customer exports are not affected by this limit.

Tips and Best Practices

Use JSON for backups — JSON exports can be re-imported into a new Luminate salon, making them ideal for data portability and disaster recovery
Use CSV for your accountant — CSV files open directly in Excel and Google Sheets, perfect for financial analysis or sharing with external parties
Export monthly — Create a routine to export key reports (revenue, payroll) at the end of each month for your records
Respond to GDPR requests promptly — Use the Individual Customer export to quickly package all data about a customer. UK GDPR requires you to respond within one month
Download promptly — Export files expire after 24 hours, so download them as soon as they're ready
Use PDF for sharing — Use PDF report exports when sharing with stakeholders who don't need to manipulate the data
Name files consistently — If saving exports locally, add the salon name and date to avoid confusion, especially with multiple locations

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I export all my customer data?

Yes. Use the Full Salon export in Settings > Data > Exports. This includes all customer records with contact details, preferences, badges, and marketing consent. For a single customer's data, use the Individual Customer export.

Can I export appointment data?

Yes. Appointments are included in both full salon exports and individual customer exports. This includes appointment times, statuses, deposits, consultation notes, and cancellation reasons.

What's the difference between Data Exports and Report Exports?

Data Exports (Settings > Data > Exports) export your raw data — every record in the system. Report Exports (Reports section) export summarised, filtered views of your data for a specific date range. Use Data Exports for backups and GDPR; use Report Exports for accounting and analysis.

Can I schedule automatic exports?

Automatic scheduled exports aren't currently available. You need to manually create exports as needed.

How do I handle a GDPR Subject Access Request?

Go to Settings > Data > Exports, select Individual Customer, search for the customer, and create a JSON or CSV export. This packages everything Luminate holds about that customer into a downloadable ZIP file. (You can also use Export Data, under Export Customer Data on the customer's profile page — it deep-links to the Exports sub-tab with the customer pre-selected.)

Can I import data from a CSV or Excel file?

The bulk import system uses JSON format. If you have data in spreadsheets, contact support at hello@luminate.salon who can help convert it to the required format.

Is there a size limit on exports?

No practical limit. Full salon exports for large salons with years of data may take several minutes to process, but the system handles this in the background with progress tracking.

Can I export from multiple salons at once?

No — exports are salon-specific. Switch to each salon and create exports separately.

What happens if I delete an export?

The export record and its ZIP file are permanently removed. You can always create a new export if you need the data again.

Last Updated: August 2026