Import Customers

Learn how to add customers, their contact people, and associated sites at one go by importing spreadsheet

Updated over a week ago

Importing customers with their company contacts and associated sites is a quick way of adding large quantity of customers to Loc8.
For importing customers, you need a CSV file, which is essentially a spreadsheet containing your customer details, but in a layout that matches Loc8's recommendations for successful import.

We have listed down important points that will help you prepare your spreadsheet for import:

If you face any trouble importing customers, please take a look at the Troubleshooting tip at the end of this article.

Column Headers 

The first row of the CSV file MUST have the headers given below:

A1 ACTION
B1: CUSTOMER REFERENCE
C1: ID
D1: NAME
E1: EMAIL
F1: PHONE
G1: ADDRESS 1
H1: ADDRESS 2
I1: CITY
J1: STATE
K1 COUNTRY
L1: POSTCODE
M1: SITE CONTACT REFERENCE

You can also download a sample CSV file from the import wizard (discussed in section below) to skip adjusting the headers yourself.

Order of Actions

While preparing the CSV file, ensure that you have the values of the ACTION column in the following order only:

ADD CUSTOMER COMPANY
ADD CUSTOMER CONTACT
ADD SITE

or

ADD CUSTOMER INDIVIDUAL
ADD SITE

This order ensures that your customers are correctly linked to their contacts and sites.

When would you fill in CUSTOMER REFERENCE Column

This column must be filled only for ADD CUSTOMER CONTACT and ADD SITE actions.

The value entered in the CUSTOMER REFERENCE column must be the same as that provided in the customer's ID.

When you do so, the new contact and new sites get linked to the customer through the specific customer's ID. 

This is useful when:

  • Your sites and customer contacts are not directly under the customer row as shown in the spreadsheet below:

  • You are importing a new set of sites and customer contacts for a customer who is already added in Loc8, in which case you will only have a series of ADD CUSTOMER CONTACT and ADD SITE actions without the ADD CUSTOMER COMPANY. The customer ID entered for each of them under the CUSTOMER REFERENCE column will correctly link them together during import.

CSV file that's already been imported:

CSV file with new customer contact and site being imported now:

When would you fill in SITE CONTACT REFERENCE Column

This column must be filled only for ADD SITE action.

The value entered in the SITE CONTACT REFERENCE column must be the same as that provided in the Customer Contact's ID. 

When you do so, the new site gets linked to the customer contact. In a way, you are indicating that -- on import, this particular customer contact should be added as the site contact.

A few points to help you tailor the spreadsheet perfectly:

  • The maximum size limit is 1000 rows.  If you need to import files larger than that, you need to split it up and do multiple imports.

  • The import only supports one value per cell.

  • Your spreadsheet must be on Sheet1.

  • Your spreadsheet shouldn't contain any formulas, charts or blank rows.

  • Your spreadsheet shouldn't contain any errors (like #REF!, #NAME?, #N/A or #. VALUE!).

  • Names shouldn't contain colons (:) or quotation marks (").

Importing Customers

STEP 1 From the Customers workspace, select Import to open the import customers wizard.

STEP 2 Prepare your spreadsheet to match the recommended headers and cells required for importing your customers, contacts and sites.

STEP 3 Upload your prepared spreadsheet and correct errors if any.

In case your data doesn't match the layout recommended for import, you'll see the errors and warnings list as shown below:

You have to correct the errors to proceed. Warnings do not stop import, but you may miss out associations between the customer, and its contacts and sites that you wish to retain after importing.

Your importing process is now complete.

You will find the imported customers, new sites, company contacts and site contacts in the Customers workspace.

The example below shows how you can use the sorting option to view the customers that were just created using the import process.

Troubleshooting Tip in case of Import Failure

Problem: You are trying to upload your customers using the CSV template and you see the following message: "Analysed cancelled. No customers to import and no errors found", although you have saved the file with extension .CSV and followed the necessary headings, and left no empty row below headers.

Solution: Please download the template and fill in your columns once again. That helps to discard any corrupt entries and sorts out the problem. 

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