CSV Import Flow
How to fill in the CSV template, choose how customers are matched, and import your jobs.
The CSV import brings your customers and jobs in from a spreadsheet, so you can use it whether you are coming from another system, from a paper round book, or from your own records. It is one flat file with one row per job, and the customer's details repeated on each of their rows.
It brings across customers, jobs, rounds and services. It does not bring across invoices, payments, or any other financial history.
Start From The Template
The Start from a template card at the top of the page gives you two downloads. Download template gives you the column headings on their own, ready to paste your data under. Download template with example data gives you the same headings with four filled-in rows, which is the quicker way to see how a weekly job, a monthly job, a one-off and a second job for the same customer are each written.
You can reorder the columns, and you can delete any you do not need. Work Planner reads the file by the heading text, not by column position, so only the headings themselves have to match.
What Goes In The Columns
- Customer columns: reference, title, first and last name, company, email, phone, mobile and the full address. Repeat these on every row for that customer.
- Round and Service: the names you use. If a round or service with that name does not exist yet, Work Planner creates it, so you do not have to set them up first.
- Frequency and Interval: Week with an interval of 4 means every four weeks. Leave Frequency blank for a job with no schedule.
- Day and Week: day names such as Monday, Wednesday, and for monthly jobs a week such as First or Last.
- One Off: set this to Yes for work that happens once. The job keeps its start date but no recurring schedule.
- Start Date: when the job is first due, written as DD/MM/YYYY. Work Planner works out the next due date from this and your schedule, applying your non-working day settings.
- Price, VAT Rate and First Price: VAT Rate has to be 0, 5 or 20. Fill in First Price when the first visit costs more than the regular one, and the job will charge that initial price next time.
- Notes: becomes a note on the job, shown on the worksheet.
- Job address columns: leave these blank and the job is worked at the customer's own address. Fill them in when the work happens somewhere else, such as a property a landlord owns but does not live at.
Matching Options
Because a spreadsheet has no Work Planner customer IDs in it, you decide how a row is recognised as somebody you already have.
- Match customers on: tick any of email, address and postcode, first and last name, or customer reference. A row counts as an existing customer when any one of the ticked fields matches. Pick Don't match — always create new customers when you are importing into an empty account and want nothing compared.
- When a customer matches: Add the job only leaves their details exactly as they are, Update the customer's details, then add the job fills in anything the file supplies, and Skip the row ignores it completely. A blank cell is never used to clear something you already hold.
- When the customer already has the same job at the same address: choose whether to create it again, skip it, or update the one you have. Jobs are only treated as the same when the round, the service and the working address all match, so two properties with identical work stay as two jobs.
The matching options only appear for CSV imports, and the last two are hidden when you have chosen never to match. Even then, a customer repeated across several rows of one file still lands as a single customer with several jobs.
When A Row Will Not Import
A row with a problem in it, such as a date Work Planner cannot read or a VAT rate that is not 0, 5 or 20, is reported and skipped. The rest of the file still imports. The summary at the end lists the row number and what was wrong with it, so you can correct those rows and upload just them afterwards.
Related articles
- Import Data Home: the provider-choice screen before this one.
- Import Progress and Cancellation: the progress and summary stage after the upload starts.
- Creating a Job from the Dashboard: the same fields, set up one job at a time.