Customer Import

Benefits of customer import 

Upload thousands of records
Maintain accurate, up-to-date customer records with minimum effort. Choose your import file, map your data with intuitive dropdown bars, and begin importing. The customer import tool can be used to import up to 10,000 customer data entries without disrupting back office processes.  

Update all customer records at once
Say goodbye to item-by-item updates. The customer import tool can be used to make changes to all customers at once, or to update records of smaller customer groups. Erply updates mapping options based on your dataset to keep your records highly accurate.

Custom uploads for a flexible upload process
Because Erply allows you to upload your own files, you can easily choose between updating all customers, or simply making changes to smaller customer segments. 
Add any column to your spreadsheet, then map it to an appropriate data field within the import tool. Upload templates are flexible, allowing you to freely map your data regardless of column order. 

How to use the customer import tool

Be sure to use our customer import template.
Don’t see a field that you need? Add a column to your spreadsheet and map the data in the importer. As long as the data field exists within Erply, you can add it to your spreadsheet. 

Start a customer import

In the back office, navigate to the Customers module and from the subsection Export and Import, select Import customers.

Customers can be imported as a .xlsx or a .csv file. In order for your data to upload properly, you must select if you have a header row.

Click Upload and Start Mapping to begin your customer import.

Mapping your customer data

Erply may predict where each data column should be mapped. Blank fields will need to be manually mapped.
Double-check that all data columns pre-filled by Erply are correctly mapped. If you need to change where a column is mapped, click the column’s header. 

Select Confirm Mapping to finalize your data mapping.

Importing subgroups

In your import template, you always want to list the intended subgroup in the customer group column.

Using the following subgroup structure as an example:
West coast customers → LevelUp Rewards → PC-only
West coast customers → LevelUp Rewards → Xbox-only
West coast customers → Non-loyalty member 

An example import template would look like this:

Data types

Customer information: Used to set up customer-specific information such as name, point balance, etc.
Address information: Used to set up location-based information for a customer, such as their shipping address.
Contact information: Used for customers that are businesses or for companies that have individual contacts outside of the primary contact.

Although your data can be mapped into any column, we recommend choosing values that most accurately represent your data’s values.

Updating existing customer data

If you want to update existing customer data in bulk, scroll down to the option Match Existing Customers By.
We recommend selecting Customer ID as all customers are assigned a unique ID.

Erply will only display fields which have been assigned to a specific column. Follow the above steps to update your customer data in bulk.

Frequently asked questions

I received an error saying “the field that is used to match the customer with existing users is empty.”
Erply sends this alert if it detects empty data in a column that’s selected for mapping. You can cancel the import and edit your file, or start the import regardless of the blank data.

Why isn’t my file importing?
The two most common import errors are improper formatting or bad data. Be sure to check over your data for blank columns and ensure that all columns are mapped correctly.
If a .xlsx file will not work, try saving the file as a .csv instead. This will strip away any formatting that Erply’s customer importer tool may be unable to read. 

Is there a maximum amount of data I can import?
Erply’s customer import tool can handle approximately 10,000 records within an hour. While we do not have a dedicated upper limit, larger files have more potential for error and can tie up your API calls for longer periods of time. 
We recommend larger imports should be started after hours, to allow ample time for the upload to complete.

What is the best way to match data when updating customers?
We recommend, if possible, to use the internal customer ID in Erply. The internal customer ID guarantees to be unique to each record and ensures accuracy.

A full list of identifiers that can be used to identify customers:
Customer ID
Full name
Company name
Phone
Mobile
National ID no. / Reg. Code

How to change Person to Company using the import?
If you want to change Person to Company we firstly recommend Exporting your customer into a Excel sheet from Customers - Export customers. On the Export file you need to locate the Persons you want to change to a company, and leave the ID of the Person in the first column, and add the company name to the second Column. Remove any clients from the exported file you do not want to transform into a Company. Please note that to be able to export the customer list, you need to authorize the ability to do so for admin user group.
Note: You can manage user rights in the back office Settings -> User Groups page.
Once you start importing, you need to scroll down to the option Match Existing Customers By. Here you can select the first ID field on the file that you modified, now select the second Column as Company name. You can add all others details to the Company card from the columns as well, but the ID and Company Name fields are the only ones needed to make the switch from Person to a Company.

How do I find the customer ID in Erply?
The customer ID is generated automatically by Erply, and can be found on any customer card. You can pull a report in the back office to view all customer IDs, if necessary.