Importing Accounts/Contacts

When you're importing customers into the CRM database, it is critical to understand that rave supports both accounts and contacts, and gives you the option to import either accounts, or accounts and contacts. This simple diagram illustrates the realationship between accounts and contacts:

If your customer base is represented by a company with several contacts at that company, then you'll want to make sure your Excel import file includes a company name field. When you import the file, the system will create one record in the account database for each unique company name, and one record for each contact in the contact database. For example, consider the following spreadsheet:

The first line are the column headers and you'll be able to map these fields to the fields in the CRM database after you upload the spreadhseet.

Notice there are 2 unique company names, ABC systems and Best Computers. Importing this file would create 2 account records, one for each company, and 3 contact records.

Once you ulpload the spreadsheet, you must map the column headers of the spreadsheet to fields in the CRM database as follows:

You can use the ignore option in the dropdown list if you want to skip any of the fields. You can also specify a Batch ID. This is usefuly as the import will tag all records added with this ID. We can use it to find and or delete all records later using the search option.

You also have the option to set fields on the CRM database to a specified value. For example, if you wanted to indicate that you are the accout manager for all records, select the account manage field and enter your login userid.

After you import this file, we can see the two account records that have been created:

If we click on the yellow pencil to edit the account of ABC systems and scroll down to the contacts section of the forrm, we can see the 2 contacts that were created:

If at a future date you again upload a spreadsheet that includes company names that match an existing name in the CRM database, only new contact will be added to the existing account. The system will not create a new company account if it's in the database already.

If within your business you only deal with one person at a company or your customers are consumers (B2C), then you can either:

a. exclude the company name field from the spreadsheet. This will cause the import to only create account records.

b. or you can use the check box option to indicate you only want to create account records and no contact records.