Potential something is not the same as something. It's like spending more money than one has and calling the difference potential money. If energy is being converted to potential energy, then it is not being conserved. The logic is that it is possible to get the same amount of energy out of potential energy as was put into it, and therefore it is conserved some place in some form. The truth is that the place and form of potential energy is force.
Force is one of the forms of energy.
But physicists do not want to admit that force is a form of energy, because force can be amplified, and amplified energy would not be conserved energy. Physicists prefer pretense for convenience, so they don't have to expose their ignorance in trying to explain something which is not understood. They are peddling the bliss of ignorance and calling it laws of nature. The proof that force is one of the forms of energy is in elastic collisions. When the two objects move toward each other, they have kinetic energy, and there us no force involved.