From spreadsheets to Klynto — a café owner's migration story

Sunita L. runs a busy café in the heart of the city. For three years, she managed everything across three tools: a billing app, a handwritten stock book, and a spreadsheet her nephew built that nobody else could understand. When one of those tools raised its price and broke an integration in the same week, she decided it was time to consolidate.

She moved everything onto Klynto over a single weekend. This is her story — what she did, in what order, and what she'd tell anyone else thinking about making the switch.

Friday evening — the prep

Before touching Klynto, Sunita spent Friday evening cleaning up her existing data. She exported her customer list from the billing app, fixed the obvious duplicates, and standardised her product names (no more 'Chicken S/W' and 'Chkn Sandwich' both existing as separate items). Two hours of cleanup made the import painless.

Her advice: 'Don't skip this step. Migrating messy data doesn't clean it — it just moves the mess into a new system.'

Saturday morning — products and inventory

She started with products — her menu items and the raw ingredients she tracks for inventory. Klynto's CSV import handled the menu items in minutes. For inventory, she did a physical stocktake on Saturday morning and entered current quantities directly. She focused on the 30 items that move most — the ones that actually cause problems when they run out.

Setting up the menu in Klynto — categories, photos, prices — took about 3 hours. She uploaded phone photos for every item. 'They're not magazine quality, but they're real and customers recognise them.'

Saturday afternoon — tables, QR codes, and the first test order

She set up the floor plan in Spaces, added her 14 tables, and assigned the menu. Printed the QR code stickers (Klynto generates them as a single PDF), placed them on tables, and ran a test order from her phone. From scan to order appearing in the orders queue: 45 seconds.

'That was the moment I knew it was going to work. I scanned my own table, ordered a flat white and a croissant, and watched it appear on the screen. My nephew walked over and said — okay, this is actually good.'

Saturday evening — billing setup and customer import

Sunita imported her regular customer list — about 80 people. She tagged her loyalty regulars and her corporate accounts separately so she could filter them easily in reports. She set up two billing templates: a standard dine-in receipt format and a corporate invoice format for her B2B clients.

Her previous billing app had 14 custom fields nobody used. Klynto kept it simple. 'I realised I was maintaining complexity that didn't add any value.'

Sunday — staff training and the soft launch

Sunday morning was staff training. It took 45 minutes. The team was sceptical going in and mostly converted by the end. The sticking point: they wanted to know how to handle a customer who didn't want to use QR. Easy answer — staff can place orders manually from any device. The QR and the staff view are the same system.

Sunday afternoon was the soft launch — the café opened as normal. A few customers asked about the QR codes; staff guided them through it. By end of day, 60% of tables had self-ordered via QR without any staff assistance.

What she'd do differently

Only one thing: she'd set up the automated reports on Friday too, before the weekend rush. She didn't get to it until Monday and missed having her first Klynto-powered weekend summary. 'Small thing, but I was curious how it would read.'

Her parting advice to anyone hesitating: 'You're not replacing everything at once. You're just stopping the juggling. The first day you don't have to switch between three apps to close out the day, you'll wonder why you waited.'