The pre-import checklist for GoHighLevel snapshots

Print this. Work down it. The whole thing takes under an hour and it removes most of the ways a snapshot goes wrong.

Stage one: before you buy

1. Ask for the workflow list. Names and triggers. If the seller cannot produce it in a minute, they did not build it.

2. Ask for the pipeline stage names. Generic stages such as “New, Contacted, Won, Lost” tell you the builder did not think about your business. Specific ones such as “Adjuster scheduled” tell you they did. Compare against a crate that publishes them, such as the roofing contractor crate or the chiropractic clinic crate, and the difference between a considered build and a relabelled one is obvious in about ten seconds.

3. Ask what is not included. A confident vendor answers this immediately. A defensive answer means you will discover the gaps yourself.

4. Ask about platform updates. GoHighLevel changes and breaks things. Ask what happens when it does and whether reissued share links cost anything. Ask also how updates reach an account you have already loaded, because a newer version does not travel to a deployed sub-account on its own.

5. Read the message copy if you can see it. Generic copy is fine as a base. Copy containing another company’s name means you are buying an exported client account.

6. Check it matches your channels. A snapshot built entirely around SMS is not useful if you cannot get A2P approval in your market.

6a. Check what it costs to finish, not just to buy. A cheap file that needs eleven hours of your own work is not cheap, and the price bands in this market only make sense once the finishing time is in the sum. Everything on the depot catalog is priced with the writing already done and 12 hours of installation support inside 14 days.

Stage two: before you import

7. Choose an empty sub-account. By far the safest destination.

8. If the account is not empty, list every existing workflow trigger. That list is your conflict map. Two workflows on one trigger both fire.

9. Submit A2P 10DLC registration. Do this first because approval is slow and outside anyone’s control, and check your site’s consent language and privacy policy match your sample messages before you submit, which is where most campaign rejections come from.

10. Add your sending domain records. DNS propagation is slower than you remember.

11. Read the install notes end to end. Not while importing. Before.

12. Take a snapshot of the current account if it has anything in it. Your own rollback point costs nothing and takes two minutes.

Stage three: immediately after import

13. Fill every custom value. Settings, then Custom Values. Every single one. This is the number one cause of embarrassing live messages, and if you are loading the same crate into several sub-accounts, one value sheet per account is what keeps that from becoming an afternoon each time.

14. Assign every calendar to a user. Users do not travel in snapshots, so every imported calendar arrives ownerless.

15. Set real calendar availability, buffers and notice periods. Default availability books 6am Sundays.

16. Connect a phone number and send a test SMS through a workflow.

17. Send a test email through a workflow. Not the template preview, which proves nothing about authentication.

18. Check every workflow’s publish state. Imported workflows commonly arrive as drafts and give no warning.

19. Open every workflow and verify its trigger. Broken asset references are the most common import artefact.

20. Rename pipeline stages into your own language.

Stage four: before the first live lead

21. Submit every form as a stranger. Real email, real phone. Follow the whole path.

22. Test the three paths nobody tests.

• Reply to the first text. The sequence must stop.
• Submit at 11pm. You should get the after-hours message.
• Submit twice with the same email. You should not get two parallel sequences.

23. Read every customer-facing message aloud. If it does not sound like you, rewrite it. If it makes a claim you cannot back, delete it.

The two-week follow-up

Open the first ten real contact records individually and read the timelines. Every import has exactly one thing wrong with it and it is always visible there and invisible in reporting.

Then delete what you are not using. Unused flows make the account unreadable a year from now, usually for somebody who is not you.

If a check fails

Nothing on this list tells you what to do when a workflow is published, the value is filled and the message still does not arrive. That is a different exercise, ordered by symptom rather than by stage, and the diagnostic order for a snapshot that will not fire covers it.

If working through this list is not how you want to spend the week, our snapshot customisation service does the whole thing, including the message rewrite. Pick the shelf first if you have not already: the home and trade aisle carries seven crates and is the shortest route to a build that already speaks your trade.