The reason most coaches stay on a spreadsheet is not that it works well. It is that switching looks like a weekend of retyping, and a client's program cannot go dark while you do it.
So do not switch. Run Koach beside your spreadsheet for a month, move the parts that pay off first, and let the rest expire on its own.
The first 30 minutes
This is the whole of day one. Nothing here needs your historical data.
- Turn on Coach Mode. Settings has the toggle; it only adds a My clients row, it does not change anything a client sees.
- Invite two or three clients. Not all of them - start with the ones you talk to most, since they are the ones whose admin you feel. Each gets a one-time link and chooses exactly what to share with you. See Invite a trainee.
- Set their targets. Calories and macros, from their goal. If you are recomputing rather than copying, the macro calculator does the split.
- Give each one their current week. One nutrition plan, one workout plan, as they stand today. Not their history. Not their past blocks. This week.
At the end of that half hour a client can open the app, see the plan you already wrote for them, and log against it. That is the point at which the switch starts paying for itself.
Weeks one to four: keep the spreadsheet open
Do not delete anything. For the first month the spreadsheet is your backup and your edge-case handler, and you will still reach for it a few times. That is expected, and it is much cheaper than discovering something is missing after you have thrown it away.
What changes during that month is where the daily work happens: plans get edited in Koach, logging happens in the app, and WhatsApp goes back to being a conversation instead of a filing system.
What to move first
In this order, because this is the order of how much time each one gives back:
- This week's plans, for your most active clients. Highest value, lowest effort.
- Your repeated templates. The workout you write for every new lifter, the meal structure you always start from. You will use these on every future client, so they are worth entering once and properly.
- Current targets. Whatever each client is eating and training toward right now.
- Foods you use constantly that are not in the catalog yet - your own protein blend, a local product - as custom foods, added the first time they come up rather than in a batch.
What never needs moving
Skip these. They cost hours and change nothing:
- Past programs. They are finished. If one comes back, you have the spreadsheet.
- Historical logs and old weigh-ins. New history starts accumulating in Koach the day a client starts logging, and that is the history you will actually read.
- Clients who are finishing in a few weeks. Let them run out where they are.
- Old check-in photos and message threads. They stay where they are; nothing needs them to be in Koach.
When you can close the spreadsheet
When you have gone two weeks without opening it. That usually lands somewhere in the second month, and it happens on its own rather than on a date you set.
If it still looks like too much
We will do the move for you. Send us your client list and their current plans and we will set them up, which is the offer on the front page and not a special case. Get in touch through the contact page.
Next
Once your clients are in, Manage a trainee covers what you can see, what you can edit, and what a "Not shared" section means.