Rather than adding customers one at a time, you can import customers in a bulk. To do this, an Excel file must contain your customers.
Only users with Manager or Administrator role can import customer data.
Creating the Excel file
To get started, download the attached file (See bottom of page).
Alternatively, your accounting program most likely allows you to export customer data to Excel.
See QuickBooks for Desktop, or QuickBooks Online.
The Excel file must be created using Office 2007 or newer. The file ends with .xlsx. Many other programs such as Apple Numbers, Google Sheets and OpenOffice can also be used.
The first row in the file should contain the columns listed below. You can include as many of the columns you need. The Customer Name column should always be included, but the rest are optional. It is CRITICALLY important that you name the columns exactly as described below: "Customer Name", "Phone Primary" etc. Columns that have non-matching names will be ignored during the import.
| Customer Name | Service Address1 | Service City | Service State | Service Postal Code |
| Ben Johnson | 205 Main St | New York | NY | 10010 |
Full list of information that can be imported
| Column | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Customer ID | ✓ (only if you re-import customers) | If you are importing customers that are NOT already in ServicePal, you should NOT include this column. If you are exporting customers from ServicePal, making changes and re-importing the records, THEN you SHOULD include this column. The unique Customer ID is used to match a row in Excel with your existing customer. You should not modify this ID. |
| Customer Name | ✓ | Name of the customer. Used for displaying and sorting your customers (required). |
| First Name | First name of the person associated with the company (if specified). | |
| Last Name | Last name of the person associated with the company (if specified). | |
| Company Name | Name of the company. | |
| Type | Used to categorize your customers. If left empty, type will be set to the default customer type. If a type is specified that has not been setup, it will be created during the import. | |
| Phone Primary | The primary phone number associated with the customer. | |
| Phone Mobile | The mobile phone number associated with the customer. Used for Text Messaging (SMS) | |
| Phone Other | Alternative phone number associated with the customer. | |
| One or more email addresses associated with the customer. If multiple, the Email addresses must be separated by comma. | ||
| Note | A note about the customer. The note is added to jobs created for the customer. | |
| Billing Address1 | Use the first address line for the street name of the billing address. | |
| Billing Address2 | Second address line for the billing address. Could be used for "Suite #", "Attn: Accounting" etc. | |
| Billing City | City for the billing address. | |
| Billing State | State or province for the billing address. | |
| Billing Postal Code | Postal code for the billing address. | |
| Service Address1 | Use the first address line for the street name of the service address. | |
| Service Address2 | Second address line for the service address. Could be used for "Suite #", "Attn: Office" etc. | |
| Service City | City for the service address. | |
| Service State | State or province for the service address. | |
| Service Postal Code | Postal code for the service address. | |
| Heard About Us | Specifies how the customer heard about your company. See | |
| Tags | Used to tag your customer for marketing or classification purpose. | |
| External ID | This column is used by our large enterprise customers to map a customer record in ServicePal to an external systrem. Most users can ignore this column. |
NOTE:
1. If only the Billing Address is specified, the Service Address will be set to match the Billing Address information.
2. Email addresses must have correct naming conventions.
Importing customers
1. Sign in using a web browser
2. Click Customers
3. Click Import
4. Click Browse... and locate the Excel file on your computer
5. Click Import
Next Steps
The import will be processed in the background, allowing you do move on to other functions.
Once the import has completed, you will receive an email letting you know how many customers were imported successfully.
Customers that could NOT be imported will be contained in a Excel attached to the email. You do not need to re-import customers that were imported successfully, but can instead focus on the ones contained in these Excel files.
Take a look at the Customer Import Sample spreadsheet. It shows how you can import a customer with two different service addresses.