Switching software without retyping everything: importing customers, sites and installations

What can you take with you when you switch?

When you switch, you mainly take the data you will keep working with tomorrow: your customers and their contact persons, their sites, the installations you maintain, your current maintenance contracts, your items and parts, your suppliers and the stock you start with. That is also the data that would take the most typing.

What you do not need to take with you is best decided beforehand: customers who have not ordered anything for years, items that are no longer supplied, duplicate records. A switch is the moment to clean up, not to move ten years of clutter.

Cleaning up your data before the import: a checklist

• One customer, one record. The same customer is often in an old system two or three times, spelt differently. Merge them before the import.
• Customer and site separate. A property manager (syndic) with twelve buildings is one customer with twelve sites, not twelve customers.
• Complete addresses. Street and number, postcode and municipality in separate columns. If you have the coordinates (latitude and longitude), include them: without coordinates, a site does not appear on the map in Service Suite.
• Installations with brand, type and serial number. Without a serial number, a unit cannot later be told apart from the one next to it.
• One code per item. The same gasket under three different descriptions becomes three items.
• Contracts with their term and frequency. A maintenance contract without a clear start and frequency becomes a contract that nobody follows up.

In what order do you import?

Always import what sits higher up before what depends on it: a site belongs to a customer, an installation to a site, a contract to an installation or a site. In practice:

1. Item categories
2. Items and parts
3. Customers
4. Customer contact persons
5. Suppliers and their contact persons
6. Sites
7. Installations
8. Maintenance contracts
9. The opening stock

If you reverse the order, you get an error for every line whose customer or site does not exist yet.

Check first, then import

An import that half succeeds is worse than no import: part of the data is in, part is not, and nobody knows which. That is why you check first, without writing anything. Only when the check shows that the lines are in order do you import.

Start with a small file, for example twenty customers, and check them in the software. If they are right, the rest follows.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

In Service Suite, you import your data yourself from the configuration, in ten types: item categories, items and parts, customers, customer contact persons, suppliers, supplier contact persons, sites, installations, maintenance contracts and the opening stock.

• Template: for each type, you download an Excel or CSV template, with the list of required columns. Always use the template you download from the screen.
• Check: the check does not write anything yet and counts the lines that are in order, with an error, with a warning, duplicate, new or to be updated.
• Import: only the lines without an error are imported. You get a report that shows, line by line, what went wrong, and the import stays in the import history.
• Update: an option lets you update data that already exists; without it, an existing line is skipped.

A few limits to be aware of: a file is at most 10 MB, there is a maximum number of lines per type (for example 20,000 customers), and you cannot undo an import with one click. So checking before importing is not a formality.

After the import, customers, sites, installations and contracts are together in the customer file. How to follow up the maintenance contracts afterwards is explained in tracking maintenance contracts.

Import yourself or have it migrated?

You can import your data yourself with the templates. If you would rather have Digitalnatie do the migration for you, data migration is a separate service, quoted for your situation together with onboarding, configuration and training. What can be migrated, and in what format, depends on what your current system can export; see the frequently asked questions.

Frequently asked questions

In what format should I supply my customers?

For the import into Service Suite, in Excel (.xlsx) or CSV, in the template you download for each type of data. A file can be at most 10 MB.

Can I undo an import?

Not with one click. So check first: the check does not write anything and shows which lines are in order. Start with a small file and only import the rest once the result is right.

What happens to lines with an error?

They are not imported. The report shows, line by line, what went wrong, so that you can correct them and import them again.

Can I update existing customers with an import?

Yes, with the option to update existing records. Without that option, a customer who already exists is skipped.

Is the migration of my data included?

You can always import yourself with the templates. A data migration by Digitalnatie is a separate service, quoted for your situation.