Our Data Import allows you to import Companies and Contacts in bulk from an Excel spreadsheet, helping you store all of your data in one place.

How do I bulk import companies and contacts?

How do I download imported data?

To access the Data Importer, click here. From here, you can view previous imports completed, create new records, and update existing records. This guide will explain how to bulk create new Company and Contact records, but to find out more about updating existing records click here. For new records, click 'Create New Records'.

Our Data Importer uses an Excel spreadsheet template to import your new Companies and Contacts in bulk. You'll first need to tick all the data fields you want included in your spreadsheet remembering to click "Show More" to ensure you don't miss any.

You won't be able to tick some fields as they are mandatory anyway, and there are some fields we'd strongly recommend you include (detailed in our Import Checklist guide). You can also import any custom fields you have within your CRM by ticking these too.

Once happy with your selection, click 'Download template'.

Once you've downloaded the spreadsheet, you can populate it with your data. Any mandatory fields will be marked with an asterisk (*) in the Excel header, meaning you must include data in these cells (don't leave any cells blank!).

Once ready to import your data click the 'Next' button.

Please Note: Some fields require the data inputted in the Excel sheet to be an exact match to the data in the CRM. This is particularly important for updating any Products and Customers, if the match is not exact, it will not work. This includes but is not limited to, any spaces in the text and case sensitivity.

A really important step! The Import Rules will determine how we de-dupe your newly imported data against the data that's already in your CRM.

Contacts

Duplicate Contacts will be identified by matching their email address with Contacts already in the CRM. When a duplicate is found, the importer needs to know what action to take.

The default option of "Skip" will tell the importer to simply miss out the Contact and not create a duplicate Contact. Selecting "Duplicate", will mean the new Contact is still created, but to ensure that all Contacts in the CRM still have unique primary email addresses, this duplicate email address will be stored in the Additional Emails list instead of the Primary Email field.

Companies

Duplicate Companies can be identified either by their Sales Ledger or a combination of their Company Name and Postal/Zip Code. If a duplicate is detected, the existing record will be used for assigning new Contacts.

Note: To avoid creating duplicate records, make sure to include the Company Name, Company Group, AND the Post/Zip Code for each record you import.

Once you've selected your preferred Import Rules, click the 'Next' button.

The next step is to upload your populated import spreadsheet for the data import to validate the data. You can do this by either dragging and dropping the file in the highlighted area, or by clicking 'Select your spreadsheet' to use your File Explorer on your PC. You can also select the "Create New Records' button to create any missing options. This is available for all drop-downs that have the configure option.

If the Data Importer has found issues with your data, it'll highlight these after validating the spreadsheet. Please contact our Support team if there are any issues that you're struggling to resolve independently.

If everything is all OK with the data, you'll be able to click the 'Next' button.

By clicking the 'Next' button earlier, it'll initiate the data import and you'll be shown a progress bar to see how much data has been imported. If you have lots of data within the spreadsheet, then this step may take some time to complete. Therefore, you may wish to leave the data import to run and come back to it later. Please note: you can close the data importer and it'll continue to run in the background!

Once complete, it'll let you know how many rows were successfully imported.

You'll then find all of your newly imported data within the CRM, like our new Company in the screenshot below; Smith's Apple Sauce & Co!

To download the data you've imported previously (the source data), go to the Data Import page located under 'People & Places' from the navigation menu, and click the download (down arrow) icon against the relevant import.