Imports

Bulk import / upload CSV spreadsheets of data into Event Temple

Updated over a week ago

It's possible to import spreadsheets of data into your Event Temple Account.

Unless you're opening a new business, you're probably coming to Event Temple from another system. Before importing anything into Event Temple, we highly recommend you consider whether or not bringing in all old data to Event Temple on a massive scale will be beneficial. As a best practice, we recommend that you do not import large, historical databases into Event Temple as they are often out of date & irrelevant.

When you import a spreadsheet into Event Temple, there are limitations due to the types of data we can import and the quality of the data from other systems.

Some properties choose for Event Temple to do imports on their behalf (additional implementation fees apply). Alternatively, others choose to import data themselves.

All data must be in .csv format to import. If the quality of the data is not sufficient, the import will not be high quality. Regardless of who imports the data, some manual data-entry work from your team will generally be required when doing an import. If having Event Temple complete the imports for you, we will do our absolute best to help reduce it to a minimum.

What Data can be Imported?

  • Accounts Lists

  • Contact Lists

  • Booking Lists

  • Event Lists

  • Task Lists

  • Menus

Linking Data

If exports are of high quality & usable, various data can be linked

  • Contacts can be linked to their associated Accounts

  • Events, Contacts, Accounts can be linked to Bookings

  • Tasks can be linked to Contacts, Accounts, Bookings

See this article for further details & a list of specific fields that can be imported as well as the format required.

What Data cannot be Imported?

  • PDFs, this includes agreements, proposals, etc.

  • Financial Information - this includes payments, financial reports, invoicing, forecasts, etc.

  • Invalid or incomplete data.

How to run an Import

  1. Save a version of the spreadsheet as a CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) file on your hard drive or make a Google Drive copy for yourself

  2. Select the tab at the bottom you wish to upload (Contacts, Accounts, Tasks, Menus or Bookings)

  3. Input all the necessary data into the spreadsheet

  4. Save the tab as a spreadsheet

  5. Select Settings on the left-hand side of Event Temple

  6. Select the Tools dropdown

  7. Click on Imports

  8. Click the New Imports button

  9. Select the import type

  10. Select how you would like the importer to deal with duplicates

  11. Upload the file by selecting choose file

  12. Map the columns to the desired fields

  13. Click Start Import

If any items were not imported, the importer will provide you a list of 'skipped items' with the reason why they did not import.

Important Considerations about Imports

Each Import Type needs to be done separately. To ensure relevant Items are linked, Imports should be done in order:

  1. Accounts

  2. Contacts

  3. Bookings

  4. Events

  5. Tasks

  6. Menus

  7. Menu Items

Data will often need to be manipulated prior to import (eg formatting of dates)

Associations must be created in Event Temple first (eg Space Names, Booking Types)


Always use External ID when available- External ID’s link Account to Contact / Booking to Event etc.

  • External ID’s can be manually created when manipulating data

  • Events can only import if Booking has an external ID since based on external ID

Fields that do not match 1:1 to Event Temple Fields can be imported as custom field if necessary.

Fields are often case sensitive and will not import if they don't match exactly (for example Pipeline Stage, Booking status or Sub-menu).

If your data contains non-english characters, ensure your spreadsheet has the correct encoding. Otherwise the character will be skipped during import.

Common problems with imported data:

  • The data is often messy and disorganized

  • Data is often incorrectly or inconsistently formatted

  • It has old or incorrect information

  • It has duplicate data (this is especially true if providing/importing data from multiple sources)

  • Old data formats from bad spreadsheets create false data in the new system that we cannot prevent (for example, your old system might export bad data with relation to times and dates - our system won’t know it’s bad)

  • Data isn’t connected to each other (for example, you have a list of Bookings and a list of Contacts, but you cannot map which Bookings belong to which Contacts)

  • Only some data can be brought in

  • The system may be harder (and riskier) to learn and test when it is full of data from the start

  • There is no 'undo' - once an import is run, the data will need to be manually deleted by the system admin or users if it's not needed.

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