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Bring in contacts and deals from a spreadsheet

1. Where to start

Imports are for the workspace owner and admins. Open the import screen, Import from a file, from any of these:

  • The account menu, then Administration, then Data and import, then Import a spreadsheet.
  • On an empty deals list, Import deals from a file. On an empty people list, Import people from a file.

One import brings in one kind of record: People, Organizations, Deals or Leads. To bring in the first three, import three files.

2. Step 1: the file

  1. Under What the file holds, choose People, Organizations or Deals.
  2. Press Choose a CSV file, or paste rows you copied from a spreadsheet into Or paste rows from a spreadsheet (copy the header row too).
  3. Check What separates the columns: for pasted rows it is read from the header row, and the preview follows your choice. If the file was saved in an older Hebrew or Western European format, choose it under How the file was saved and check the first lines read correctly.
  4. Press Upload and read the file. The file is now in your workspace, and nothing has been created from it yet.

If the file is a Pipedrive or HubSpot deals export, the screen recognises it and matches its columns for you. Press Clear to undo that and match them yourself.

3. Step 2: columns and owners

  1. For each Column in the file, choose what it Becomes. The screen fills in the columns it is sure of and shows how sure it is. Press Use all suggestions, or Use this on one. A column left as Not imported is skipped, and blank cells change nothing. A people file with First name and Last name columns maps them to those two choices; the import joins them into the person's one name, first then last. If a people file has a Name column beside First name and Last name, Name stays the whole name and the two parts are left for you to choose.
  2. Choose Which column says who owns the record. The owner is who can see the record.
  3. Under Who each owner in the file is, match each owner in the file to a person here: a colleague, yourself (Me — I am taking these over), or Somebody who has left.
  4. Press Confirm the columns and owners. Nothing is created yet, and you can change any of this until the first records are created.

The import never creates fields or stages by itself. If the file has stages or columns your workspace does not have, the screen offers Shape your workspace from this file: a draft of new stages and new fields. Press Check the draft, then Add to the workspace if it is right. The kind of value in a new field cannot be changed after it is added.

For leads, choose Leads as the kind. Columns are matched by header, in English or Hebrew:

  • Title, required: what the lead is.
  • Contact name and Contact email: who it is from. Each row needs one.
  • Company and Phone, kept as written.
  • Value and Currency. A value needs a currency, from the column or from Currency for a value with none.
  • Expected close date and Note.

Under Match existing records by, Contact email skips a row whose email a lead already holds.

4. Step 3: creating the records

  1. Press Work out the next batch to see what the next batch would create.
  2. Press the button that creates the next rows. It says how many, a few hundred at a time, and each batch can be undone on its own. Tick Keep going until the file is finished to do the whole file, or press Stop after this batch to pause.
  3. Under Batches so far, press See what it wrote to check each batch.

Every import is listed under Imports in this workspace.

5. Take an import back

Undo an import from its own page. Open Import from a file, open the import under Imports in this workspace, and press the button that removes them, such as “Remove 3 records from the CRM”, under Undo this import. It is offered as soon as the first records are created. The undo takes back the records the import brought in. A field someone has changed since the import is left as it is, and the screen lists those. Once undoing has begun, the import creates no more records; to bring the file in again, upload it as a new import.

In History, from Settings, choosing Imports shows what imports wrote: each batch is one entry, such as “Created 3 contacts”. An import is undone as a whole, so See what undoing this would change on one of its entries sends you to the import's own page.

Undoing an import does not remove stages or fields added with Shape your workspace from this file. Edit the pipeline and retire the fields to take those back.

6. Moving from another CRM

Coming from HubSpot or Pipedrive? At the top of the import screen, under Where is your data coming from?, choose From HubSpot or From Pipedrive. The screen shows how to export from that tool. Then choose three CSV files: organizations (HubSpot calls them companies), people (contacts) and deals.

Before anything is written, Before you import lists the companies and contacts your deals name that are not in your files, and the rows that repeat. A person whose email, or a company whose domain, is already in your workspace is skipped, so importing the same files again does not make a second copy. You can change what is matched, or turn it off, under Match existing records by. Names are never matched. Rows repeated inside a file are refused rather than merged, so clean them in the file first. Then press the upload button for the file shown, one file at a time: organizations first, then people, then deals. Each file goes through the steps above, with its columns already matched and owners matched to colleagues by email address. Each file is its own import and its own undo. Activities and notes are not imported yet.

From any other tool, export your data as CSV files, one file per kind of record, and import each file with From a spreadsheet. An export from PetalCRM itself can be imported the same way: in step 1, tick This file was exported from PetalCRM, so a phone number that starts with + or a negative amount keeps its value. Leave it unticked for anything else.

7. A file made by a script or an AI agent

An import is run in the app, by an owner or an administrator. An AI agent cannot run it for you, but it can prepare the file.

  1. Save the file as CSV, UTF-8, comma-separated, with the header row first and one kind of record per file. An Excel file (.xlsx) is not read: save it as CSV first.
  2. For People, use these headers. They are matched by name, in English or Hebrew, in any order:
    • Name, or First name and Last name. A row with no name is refused.
    • Email. One address per row. A row whose email already appeared earlier in the file is refused as a duplicate.
    • Job title.
    • Company becomes a person's organization only when that organization is already in the workspace. Import the organizations first, or leave this column out.
  3. Any other column, such as phone, website or lead source, becomes a field of your own. The screen drafts them under Shape your workspace from this file. Press Check the draft, then Add to the workspace.
  4. Write phone numbers and other codes as text, exactly as they should read. A cell is never changed on the way in.

An example file, one line per row, the header first:

  • First name,Last name,Email,Job title,Phone,Lead source
  • Dana,Cohen,dana.cohen@acme.example,CTO,+972501234567,Webinar
  • דנה,לוי,dana.levi@example.co.il,מנהלת שיווק,0501234567,Referral