Import Utility: Importing Individual Contacts Part I - Overview

Import Utility: Importing Individual Contacts Part I - Overview

1. Importing Individual Contacts into the CRM is done in one of two ways: either by arranging the data to be imported in a spreadsheet and then using our Import Utility to self-import or by arranging the data in a spreadsheet and sending us the data to import ("migrate") for you.
2. You can self-import your individual contacts, including:
   • Contact First, Middle, and Last Name
   • Contact Prefix and Suffix
   • Contact Nickname
   • Contact Formal and/or Informal Salutation
   • Spouse/Partner Name
   • Household Formal and/or Informal Salutation (for contacts with a spouse or partner relationship)
   • Contact Birth Date
   • Contact Email Address(es)
   • Contact Phone Number(s)
   • Contact Mailing (Home) Address
   • Contact Billing Address
   • Contact Other Address
   • Contact Work Information (Company Name & Job Title)
   • Contact Tag(s)
   • Contact Type(s)
   • Contact Ethnicity(ies)
   • Contact Gender
   • Contact Income Level
   • Contact Parenting Status
   • Contact Marital Status
   • Contact Housing Status
   • Contact Employment Status
   • Contact Communication Preferences (send email, phone, and send mail)
   • Contact Source
   • Contact Alive/Deceased Status
   • Contact Special Comments (notes)
   • Contact Crucial Information
   • Contact Primary NP Contact
3. To learn more about any of the above fields, please see the Out-of-the-Box Contact Configurations tutorial in the Getting Started section of the support library.
4. Relationships that are not spouse/partner cannot be imported.
5. Contact Work Address CANNOT be imported via the Individual Contact import. Instead, you will need to use the Organizational Contact Import to import the organizations, their address, and the names of their employees. Through the Organizational Contact Import, you can associate the Organization's address to the employee(s) as the work address.
6. Custom Data Set information and Tasks & Interactions CANNOT be imported via the Import Utility - contact Fundly Support Migration Services. See the Import Utility Limitations tutorial for a list of all data that cannot be imported via the Import Utility.
7. The Import Utility can be used to import brand new records that don't already exist into your system and to update existing data already in your system. For example, you could use the import utility to merge basic contact details (name and address) from your old donor database and basic contact demographics (birth date, ethnicity, language spoken) from your old contact database by importing the data from each system in two separate batches. You can also use the import utility to do bulk updates to contact records. For example, perhaps your contacts are all missing prefix and you want to add it to contact records. You could export the names that are in Fundly CRM that are missing prefix, update the prefixes in the spreadsheet, and then re-import the contact records with the correct prefix.
8. You may have to do several imports to pull all the data you want into the CRM - for instance, if you want to import contact details (such as birth date and spouse/partner) as well as donation history for all of your contacts, you would need to do two separate imports: one for individual contacts to import the spouse/partner and birth date information and a separate import for the donation data (Gift Import, covered in a separate tutorial).
9. Broadly speaking, importing data is a three step process: a) organize and prepare your spreadsheet of data, b) create the import batch including linking the fields in your spreadsheet to the correct fields in the CRM, and c) reviewing the data once it imports and correct any mistakes.
10. To get started importing individual contacts, proceed to the Import Utility: Importing Individual Contacts Part II - Preparing Your Data Tutorial.