If you have your customer data stored in another software system and you want to quickly and easily add this to your vWork account you can bulk import this data.  Bulk importing customer data saves you time and effort and reduces the chance of creating errors when you set up or modify your customer data in your vWork account.

In this article

This article explains the process for importing customer data using a .CSV file as your data source. You can also import customer data directly from other packages that are integrated with vWork such as Xero, Quickbooks Online, MYOB, or Salesforce. To find out more about this, please see the article: Can I import my Customers from Salesforce/Xero/Quickbooks etc...

This article covers the following topics:

• Steps to bulk import customer data
• Create a customer .CSV file
• Import the data from the customer CSV file and map the fields to the vWork fields
• Good to know

Steps to bulk import customer data

The process to bulk import customer data has two steps:

1. Create a customer CSV file
2. Import the data from your .CSV file and map the data to the corresponding fields in vWork.

Create a customer .CSV file

Customer data is added to your vWork account by importing data from a .CSV file.

To find out more about .CSV files please see the article: Working with and importing data from a .CSV file. This article gives more information about the format of columns.

Note: Bulk import of customer data is limited to 1000 customers at a time. Create several .CSV files if your customer database exceeds 1000 customers and then bulk import your customers in batches of 1000 or less. 

A customer .CSV file should have columns with data for all the fields that you want to update from the Create Customer page in vWork. 

While you do not need to include all the fields from the Create Customer page, there are some fields you need to pay particular attention to:

• ID
  If you already use a customer-specific ID, and want to also use this in vWork, then include this in a column in the .CSV file. vWork calls this field the Customer Third Party ID. If you exclude this column vWork will generate a unique vWork ID for each customer.
  
  
• Customer site contact fields
  Later in this process, when you match fields,  you will notice we name the customer site contact fields as Delivery fields; for example, the site contact first name field is called the Delivery contact first name.
  
  
• Mobile phone number
  It is especially important to get the format of the mobile phone number correct to enable SMS alerts and messages to work properly for the customer’s site and billing contacts.
  Make sure there are no spaces in the mobile phone number and include the country and prefix code. You don’t need to include the + symbol as vWork automatically generates this.
  Mobile phone numbers will look something like these examples:
  

  4407911123456,  61412345678, or 6421345678.

• Site Address and billing address
  If you want either of these addresses to be geo-located to show on the map and enable them to be navigated to, you must include their latitude and longitude in the .CSV file. The latitude and longitude must be separated into two columns.
  
  
• email address for both the site and billing contact
  You can include more than one email address for both the site and billing contact. If you want to do this then put these in the same column in a shared cell, but separate them with either a space or a comma.

Here is an example of a .CSV customer file ready for import. Only the site contact information is shown as the billing contact information is currently hidden off to the right-hand side of the CSV file. 

We have a template CSV format that you can use to save your customer information into. You can download it here. If you don't have data for all the columns it is ok to delete the blank columns.

Import the data from the customer CSV file

Customer records are saved in vWork in the Customers tab. To bulk import customers you import the data from the CSV file and match the data to the corresponding fields in vWork.

1. Go to the Customers tab.
2. Click Import to open the Customers import page where you can import your CSV data.
   Note: If you have another package, such as Xero or Salesforce, integrated with vWork, then you have the option to select a customer file associated with this package to import your customer data into vWork.
   
   
   
   
3. Click Choose file to browse for and select your customer CSV file.
4. Click to insert a checkmark into the checkbox next to My CSV has a header row if you have labeled the columns in your customer .CSV file.
5. Click Start Matching to open the page where you match the fields from your customer data source to the customer data fields in vWork.
   
   
   
   
6. Drag the fields from the Available CSV Fields column to the matching field in the vWork Customers Fields column.  When you drop the field into its corresponding field it changes from blue to green.
   Note: You only need to match the fields you want to import.
   If you map a field to the incorrect location in the vWork Customers Fields columns you can click the X in the top right corner of the field to unmap the field.
7. When you have mapped all the fields you want, click Import Customers to begin the data transfer.
   
   
   
   
8. A warning shows advising you how many fields you are mapping.
   Click Accept to continue or Cancel if you want to go back and continue mapping the fields.
   Note: If you are importing a large database of customers it may take several minutes for these to be added to your vWork account. The CSV import is limited to 1000 customers at a time so you may need to import your customer records in batches.
   
   
   
   
9. You are returned to the Customers tab. The customers are listed in alphabetical order. Customers with geo-located addresses display a green geo-location icon next to their address.
   
   
   
   

Good to know

• When the customer data has finished importing we send you an email to confirm the customer import is complete. This also lists any missed customers or formatting issues.
  
  
• You can't import more than 1000 customer files at a time. If you have more than 1000 customers to import break the data up into several .CSV files of 1000 customer records or less then import them one batch at a time.
  
  
• It's a good idea to spend some time organizing your .CSV file data to make it as comprehensive, and accurate as you can. This can save you a lot of time and effort with manual updates to your customer data later. It is also helpful to label the columns for the data included in your .CSV file. This will make it easy to match the data from the .CSV columns to the customer detail fields in vWork.
  
  
• Bulk imported addresses are not geo-located unless you include the latitude and longitude data in separate columns as part of the .CSV file. You can read more about geo-located addresses in the article: Why do bulk imported customers not show on the map?.
  
  
• Don't Forget the API!
  We also have a full API available if you wish to look at automating this process. All of the API information can be found here.