Learn how to plan and run your switch from Periode to Session - what to set up in advance, what to send us on the day, and how your members and gift cards come across.
Most of a switch happens before switch day - sessions, prices and Stripe are all things you can set up whenever you have time. Switch day itself is short: stop Periode selling anything, pull one complete set of exports, send them to us, point your links at Session and press Go live.
Two things make a Periode switch different from any other. Memberships can't transfer automatically - Periode bills through Vipps and card agreements that can't be moved into Stripe, so members re-subscribe themselves. And gift card balances live in a separate export from the gift card list, so pulling only the obvious one loses the remaining value on every card a customer has already started spending. Both are covered below.
What moves across
Send us your exports and we'll bring across your bookings, customers, gift cards, punch passes and mailing list. Periode's data doesn't map cleanly onto the self-serve import wizard - gift cards are stored as a wallet balance per customer rather than a per-code value, punch passes are usually membership allowances rather than purchased packs, and times come out in your local clock rather than UTC. Every Periode migration so far has been run by us rather than through the wizard, and it's quicker and safer that way.
- Bookings and customers - past and upcoming, with attendees becoming customer accounts.
- Gift cards - as Session gift vouchers, keeping the original Periode code so cards and emails your customers already hold still work.
- Punch passes - Periode's punch pass is Session's bundle. Anything with sessions left comes across as credit on the customer's account - including sessions a member had left from their monthly allowance, which is how those carry over when they reactivate. We check for rows that describe the same sessions twice before importing.
- Your mailing list - with marketing consent where your export records it, so you can email your customers from Session afterwards.
- Members - as dormant records they reactivate themselves. See your members need a closer look.
Before you start
1. Schedule your sessions to match Periode
Set up your sessions in Session so the timetable mirrors what Periode is running - same days, times, durations and capacity. Bookings import by matching onto a session that already exists at that time, so anything upcoming needs a slot to land on. See repeating schedules and one-off dates.
If you run more than one site, set your locations up first - each session is scheduled at a location, and getting that right now saves re-pointing sessions later.
2. Connect Stripe
Your money moves from Periode's payment setup to your own Stripe account, which you own outright. Start it early: Stripe verifies your business and that can take a day or two. See connecting Stripe.
3. Set your prices to match Periode
Recreate your prices on each session - communal spaces, private hire, group bookings and any shorter part-session rates. See price options.
4. Decide what happens to your members
This is the decision to make early, because it changes what you tell people. Read your members need a closer look and settle two things: which Session membership tiers match your Periode plans, and whether you'll cancel members' Periode agreements yourself or ask them to. Tell us which, and we'll set the wording members see to match.
5. Carry over your policies, waivers and emails
Set your cancellation policy, waiver and automated emails to match what your customers are used to. Doing it now means nothing changes for them on the day beyond the address they book at.
6. Agree a switch day with your team
Pick a day and make sure whoever is on the desk knows bookings are taken in Session from that morning. Nothing needs to close - see common questions.
On the day
1. Stop Periode selling anything - bookings and gift cards
Turn off gift card sales as well as bookings. These are separate switches in Periode, and the gift card storefront is the one that gets missed. A venue that moved its bookings across but left the gift card page selling had cards bought through Periode for weeks afterwards - every one of them invalid on Session, discovered one at a time as customers tried to spend them. Switch both off before you export anything.
From this point on, sell gift vouchers through Session instead - Offers → Gift vouchers.
2. Point your links at Session
Update your website, social bios and anywhere else you link to booking straight away - your Session page already takes bookings, so there's no gap for customers. Your new address is bookasession.org/your-slug. See your booking links for location-specific links, session links and poster QR codes.
3. Pull your final exports
Periode's exports live on the Reporting page rather than in Settings. Pull all of these fresh, on the day, after step 1 - anything Periode records after your export is missed.
- Bookings - wide enough to cover your history plus everything upcoming.
- Gift cards - the per-card list, with codes.
- Gift card balances - a separate export, listed per customer. This is the important one.
- Punch passes - including the remaining-punches and expiry columns.
- Subscriptions - your members, including each one's next renewal date.
- Customers or sales contacts - your mailing list. If Periode records marketing consent, make sure that column is included.
The gift card list and the gift card balances are two different exports, and you need both. The per-card list has no remaining-balance column, so on its own it can't tell a card that's still worth £40 from one that's been spent to nothing. The balance export is the only place the real figure lives. Without it, every card a customer has part-spent comes across wrong or not at all.
A card marked Redeemed in Periode usually still has money on it - in Periode that means the recipient claimed it, not that they spent it. Don't leave those out.
4. Send them to us
Send the whole set in one go and we'll run the import and check it back against your exports before telling you it's done. We'll come back to you if anything looks ambiguous - a gift card that could be a cash balance or a session count, a punch pass that's really a membership allowance - rather than guessing.
5. Press Go live
Your booking page has been taking bookings by link all along. Go live is the separate act that makes it findable in Google and other search engines, so do it once your data is across and your page shows the right sessions.
- 1Open your Setup checklist and select Go live.
- 2Confirm your booking URL is settled, and that your data is imported.
The full checklist is in going live.
6. Email your customers
Anyone with an upcoming booking, a membership, a gift card balance or punch passes left should hear from you directly. Here's a short draft to adapt:
Subject: We've moved our booking system
Hi
[first name],We've switched to a new booking system called Session. Your upcoming booking, any gift card balance or session credits, and your membership have all moved across, tied to this email address.
To pick up where you left off:
- Go to bookasession.org/your-slug/welcome
- Set up your login using this same email address
- You'll see your booking and credit waiting for you
Any questions, just reply to this email.
Session works out who needs this email. After you go live, your Setup checklist lists the customers who hold a booking, membership or credit with you, with a draft you can edit and their addresses to copy. It's there for about a fortnight.
Send it from your own address - customers know your name, and it's far more likely to reach their inbox than one from a system they've never heard of. Paste the addresses into BCC, never To or Cc, or every customer sees every other customer's address.
Your members need a closer look
Periode bills members through Vipps and card agreements. Those can't be moved into Stripe, so no member arrives on Session already subscribed - they come across as dormant records and reactivate themselves. That's deliberate: an active record would block them from subscribing, and it's what stops anyone being billed twice mid-switch.
What a member sees when they reactivate:
- Their credits carried over and apply automatically when they book.
- They pay nothing today. Their first payment is set to the date their Periode plan would have renewed, and that date is shown to them.
- Their old subscription is handled - with wording that matches whichever approach you chose in step 4.
Periode keeps billing until each agreement is cancelled. Importing members doesn't stop anything on Periode's side. Cancel their agreements yourself - it's what most venues do, and it's the only version where a member can't end up paying both of you. If you'd rather they cancelled their own, Session asks them to do it before that first payment date, but some won't.
To track who's reactivated, open Customers and choose Imported members in the "All customers" dropdown. That's your list of people still to convert; they move into Members as they re-subscribe, so it doubles as a progress tracker. Note that creating an account isn't the same as reactivating - someone who's signed up but not subscribed still shows here, and still pays standard prices.
What it costs compared to Periode
Periode charges one all-in rate covering the software and the card processing together. Session splits the same job in two: Stripe's card processing fee, paid into your own Stripe account, plus Session's 0.5% platform fee, capped at £100 a month (or the equivalent in your own currency). There's no subscription.
Because the shapes differ, compare them all-in rather than rate against rate. Take a recent Periode statement, note your total takings and number of bookings, and work out what came off the top as a percentage. Then put that beside Stripe's rate for your country plus 0.5%. The full breakdown of what Session charges is in connecting Stripe, and we're happy to run your own figures if you send them over.
Common questions
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Will there be any downtime? No. Your Session booking page takes bookings for anyone with the link from the moment you create a session, so it's open before switch day. Stopping Periode first closes nothing your customers can reach.
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Why can't my members just move across subscribed? Their agreements are held by Periode's payment provider, and a recurring agreement can't be transferred between providers - the customer has to authorise the new one. Everything around it is handled: credits carry over, the first charge is deferred to their old renewal date, and they're told what to do about the old subscription.
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A customer says their gift card doesn't work. Check when the card was bought. If it was sold after you moved bookings to Session, it was sold by Periode's gift card page and never reached us - switch that page off and send us the card details so we can add it. If it predates the switch, send us the code and the customer's email and we'll look at what came across.
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What about a card that's been part-spent? It comes across with the balance that's actually left, as long as we have the gift card balances export. That export is the only place the remaining figure exists, which is why it's on the list twice.
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Do I have to do the import myself? No, and we'd rather you didn't. Send us the exports and we'll run it. Periode's data needs interpreting in a few places, and a wrong call on a gift card or a punch pass is the sort of thing a customer discovers rather than you.
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What happens to my Periode account? It stays as it is, viewable for reference. You're switching off new sales, not deleting anything. Keep it until you're confident everything came across - a month is plenty.
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Can I still send to my full mailing list? Only to people with marketing consent on record. Session's email marketing only mails people who've opted in, so include the customers or contacts export with its consent column. If your export has no consent information, tell us how those people agreed to hear from you before we bring them across.
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A customer can't see their booking after claiming their account. They need the exact email address that was on their Periode booking. If they used a different one, get in touch and we'll merge the two accounts.