Importing your customer list
The CSV columns the importer reads, what it does with duplicates, and how to fix a bad import.
The customer importer lives in the first-run wizard: Getting started in the sidebar, step 3. The wizard stays in the navigation until you have saved a shop name, and you can always reach it directly at /app/onboarding afterwards.
The file
A plain CSV (or .txt) up to 5 MB, with a header row. The importer reads four columns and ignores everything else, so an export from your old system usually needs no cleanup beyond renaming headers.
| Column | Required | What it becomes |
|---|---|---|
name | Yes | The customer organisation. Rows with an empty name are skipped. |
email | No | A contact on that organisation, marked primary. |
contact_name | No | The contact's name. Falls back to the organisation name if blank. |
phone | No | The contact's phone number. |
name,email,contact_name,phone
Northside FC,gear@northsidefc.com,Priya Raman,0400 000 000
Harbour Cafe,orders@harbourcafe.com,Sam Ellis,
Riverside School,,,A row with no email creates the organisation and no contact. That is fine: add the contact later from Customers.
Duplicates
Both the organisation and the contact are matched before they are created, so re-running the same file does not double up. Organisations match on the exact trimmed name, contacts match on email within that organisation. Two consequences worth knowing:
- "Northside FC" and "Northside F.C." are two different customers. Normalise your names in the spreadsheet, not afterwards.
- Re-importing a corrected file updates nothing on rows that already matched. It only adds what is missing.
Fixing a bad import
Nothing is locked. Go to Customers, filter or search, and delete or rename what came in wrong. If the whole run was wrong, deleting the organisations removes their contacts with them, and you can import the corrected file again.
What the importer does not do
It brings in customers and their primary contacts, nothing else. Price lists, payment terms, default carrier, historical orders and open balances are not read from the CSV. Set price lists and terms per customer in Customers once the list is in, and see pricing rules for scoping a discount to a price list rather than to each customer one by one.
Still stuck?
Email help@printersfriend.com and quote the name of this page. Support is on every plan, with a reply within 1 business day.