Documentation/ Account and plan/ Importing from Excel
Importing clients and companies from Excel
The Clients / Companies screen can take them in bulk from an Excel template. It is the way to set up a practice, or a group with a lot of entities, from scratch.
On this page
How to do it
- Open the import from the Clients / Companies screen.
- Download the template the dialog offers you.
- Fill it in with the entities you want to create.
- Choose the file you have filled in.
- Run the import.
The template
Always use the template downloaded from the dialog itself: it sets the columns expected and the order they come in. A file with any other shape gets its rows thrown out.
One row is one entity. Rows without the minimum data are dropped, and you are told about it at the end.
While it runs
The dialog shows progress with a count of the records handled. Do not start another import while one is running; the application says so if you try.
The result
At the end you get a summary with three figures:
| Figure | What it means |
|---|---|
| Created | Entities added. |
| Skipped | Rows not added because the entity was already there. |
| Failed | Rows thrown out because of an error in their data. |
The summary lists the errors it found. When there are a lot of them, it shows the first few and says how many more there are.
Rows skipped and rows rejected
| What happened | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Row skipped | An entity with that tax number already exists. | Nothing, if the existing record is right. The import never overwrites. |
| Row missing data | Required fields are empty. | Fill them in on the template and import those rows again. |
| File not valid | No file was chosen, or it cannot be read. | Check the format and rebuild it from the template. |
| No valid rows at all | Not one row meets the minimum. | Check you used the right template. |
What we advise
- Start small. A first run with two or three entities proves the template is filled in properly before you load the lot.
- Clean up the tax numbers first: that field is what decides whether an entity is created or skipped as a duplicate.
- The import does not update records that already exist. Changing an existing card is done from the list itself.