A business moving here from another system brings its records with it from that system's export, a file at a time. Each file is checked against what is here before anything changes, comes in a batch at a time in the background, and can be undone as one. Where each kind comes in:
- Clients and services: Settings, Records, Bring Your Data Over (owners).
- Contacts, for a business on Contacts rather than the full CRM: Contacts, Bring in a file (owners).
- A list of leads: Sales, Leads, Bring in a list (whoever has the sales pipeline switch).
- Products, from Shopify's product export or any spreadsheet with its columns: Products, Import (whoever has the Products switch).
- Past orders, from Shopify's order export: Products, Orders, Import (whoever has the online store switch).
A website comes over under Website & App, Import, its products checked and brought in as a file of products is: see Bringing your existing website over.
Step by step
- Export the records from the other system as a CSV file.
- Open the place that kind comes in (above) and choose Pick the file.
- Check how its columns were matched, and how the first few will come in.
- Choose Check: the whole file is checked against what is here, and nothing is added yet.
- Read what it will do, then choose Bring in.
- When it is done, download the report, and undo the file if it went wrong.
The file
A file is a CSV, the kind every system exports and every spreadsheet saves. The client and service exports from Booksy, Vagaro, GlossGenius, Square, Fresha, Mangomint and most others work as they are, and so does Shopify's customer export, with its addresses, tags and who said yes to emails and texts. A spreadsheet file (.xlsx or .numbers) is opened and saved as CSV first.
A file holds up to 100,000 clients, contacts or orders, 2,000 services, 20,000 products or 200,000 leads; a larger one is split into parts brought in one after the other. Appointments, sales at the register and gift card balances are not brought over this way yet.
What a row needs:
- a client or a contact: a name; a phone, an email, an address, a birthday, tags, notes, where they came from and their yes to offers by email or text come along when the file has them;
- a service: a name, with its category, price and minutes when the file has them;
- a lead: the business or the person, or an email;
- a product: a name and a price, with its variants (and options they match), description, brand, type, tags, pictures, barcodes, weight and stock when the file has them;
- an order: its number, the day it was placed, and something ordered; who placed it, where it went, what was paid and whether it was sent come along.
Matching the columns
Pick the file and its columns are matched by their headings; change any that is wrong, or choose Not in this file. A single name column is read as "Last, First" or "First Last". How the First Few Will Come In shows the first rows as they will be kept.
A list of leads also asks how they come in: as Cold leads, kept apart from your prospects and accounts, or as Prospects, for a list of people who reached out; whose they are (Whose), and the kind for a row that does not say. Contacts can put everyone in the file on the mailing list, for a list of people who already said yes to your emails: each yes is recorded as given by the file.
Products and orders are read as Shopify exports them, with no columns to match: a product's rows share its handle, an order's share its number. Products ask what to do with A product already here at the same address (Update it from the file or Leave it as it is), whether they are On the website, whether to Bring the pictures over too, and, when the file gives quantities, whether to Count the stock the file gives. Orders Shopify had not sent yet can come in to send, or as history.
Checking the file
Check sends the file up and checks every row against what is here. Nothing is added yet. What This File Will Do then says:
- To be added, and how many of those With something left out, such as an email that is not one;
- Here already, brought up to date: a product at the same address, when products here are updated from the file;
- Here already, left alone: the same email or phone, or for a row with neither, the same name (for a lead, the same email, phone, or name in the same city; for an order, the same Shopify number; for a product, the same address);
- The same as a row above, left alone, so a file that lists someone twice adds them once;
- Cannot come in, with why.
Worth a look lists the first of these by the file's line number. A file with nothing new says so, and there is nothing to bring in. Cancel lets the file go.
Bringing it in
Bring in starts it. It comes in a batch at a time, with how far it has come: brought in, left alone and not brought in. Pause and Resume work between batches, and Cancel stops it after the batch it is on; what came in before a cancel stays, and can be undone.
Products come in a few at a time, their pictures fetched first from where they are now; a picture that cannot be fetched is said, and the product comes in without it. Each order is numbered after your own, matched to its customer's client card by email, or by phone and first name (a card is made when there is none), and each thing ordered to your product by SKU or name. Orders are history: nothing reaches the register or the books, and no stock moves.
It carries on if you leave the page. Until the platform runs its background worker every minute, the screen says to keep the page open: left, it carries on with the night's background work. One file comes in at a time for a business. A row the database refuses is tried on its own and said "could not be saved"; a file that stops on a problem the app cannot get past keeps what it brought in.
When it is done
The screen says how many came in. Download the report lists every row worth a look, with why, in the screen's language. For a list of leads, Review likely duplicates gives what it brought in a second look.
Files Brought In, under each place a file comes in, lists the last files with where each stands, who brought it in and when. Open shows one again: its counts, its report and its undo. Starting, pausing, canceling and undoing a file are in the activity log, and Usage & Capacity counts the rows brought in.
Undoing a file
Undo the import takes out everything the file added, as one, and puts back as it was anything it brought up to date. It first looks through all of it: if any of it has been changed or used since (a client booked or given a note, a lead called or moved on, a service on an appointment, an order given a note or sent, a product sold or edited, stock counted by the file then sold), nothing is undone and the screen names a few of them. Otherwise each record goes, a batch at a time, with what came with it: the file's own yes to the mailing list, a rep's notice of a new prospect, an order's lines, a product's variants, and a service category, a client card made for an order, or a product's pictures and type, unless something else uses them now. A product brought up to date gets back its name, prices, words and pictures, and its variants their own; a variant the file added goes. Stock the file counted is taken back out, and the stock item put away rather than deleted, since stock history is never erased. Anything changed or used while the undo runs is kept, and counted.
A file's rows are kept 30 days after it ends, so it can be undone until then; a file checked but never started is let go after two days.
Best practices
- Bring a small part of the file first, look at what it made, then bring in the rest: the same file again adds nothing twice.
- Read What This File Will Do before Bring in: a high Here already count often means the columns are matched wrongly.
- Download the report and keep it with the original file.
- Undo a file that went wrong before anyone works with what it added: once a record is booked, called, sold or changed, the file cannot be undone as one.
- Bring products over before orders, so each thing ordered finds its product.
- A variant no longer in the file is never taken away when products are updated: the report names how many were left, to remove by hand.