Importing Contacts

Whether this is your first CRM or you are moving from another system, importing lets you create records and update your existing database. 

Each row represents a contact record, and each information column represents a contact property (First Name, Last Name, Email Address, etc.)

Pre-requisites:

• The import file needs to be a .csv file
• Have only one sheet/tab within the spreadsheet
• Be smaller than 50MB(Note: a typical .csv file with 4 columns and 10,000 records will be ~500kb in size)
• The first row should NOT be blank! Include a header row in which at least one column header corresponds to a field in the system.

How to import contacts into the CRM

Step 1: Setting up your CSV

Your file must contain one column for each field. All contacts must have either an email or phone number to be included. You may have as many fields as you desire.

The first row must be the header row with no blank rows.

Step 2:  Add Custom Fields before importing

If you have fields that are not standard in the CRM, you will want to add those fields prior to importing.

Standard Fields Include:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Phone
• Website
• Business Name
• Street Address
• City
• State
• Zip Code
• Country

To add additional fields go to Settings >> Custom Fields and add the new field.

Step 3: Importing your contacts

Once you have your import fiel and created your new custom fields, it is time to import.

Go to Contacts and click on the Import button.

This will open the Import Widget. There are three steps to follow.

1. Upload your CSV file
2. Match your file column heads to the CRM field names
3. Check the Do Not Include Unselected Fields
4. On the final step, select Advanced and add a tag. This could be your subscriber tag and/or where this list originated.

Advanced Import Options

The Advanced Import Options allow you to specify how you handle matching contacts or making updates to existing contacts.

• Add New and Update Existing Contact Records: This means that it will create new contacts, and if you have any leads already in the system, it will update them with the information from your CSV file. The system will check for existing contacts in the sub-account based on the unique identifier (Email, phone, or contact id) you selected.
• Add New Contact Records: This will create new contact records and will not update existing contacts in the location.
• Update Existing Contact Records: This option will only update existing contact records and not create new contacts in the location.

FAQ

My CSV list is mixed; some contacts have an email or phone #, and some have both an email and phone. How should I proceed?

Now we can find existing contact based on the secondary field, so if the contact record has only the phone number, we can also upload them!

Some of my contacts have multiple emails and or phone numbers. How should I proceed?

If a contact has multiple phone numbers or emails, please split the contacts into multiple so they will be uploaded.

Example:

Keep the email blank for the second lead with a different phone number because it will create duplicates when we upload contacts with phone numbers as the unique field.

Important note for people that use Keap:

The phone field from the CSV export in Keap is incompatible with GHL. The parenthesis '()' and dashes '-' make it incompatible. We have to highlight the entire column in the CSV file and ensure it is numbered in, remove any parenthesis and dashes, and then we can import without corrupting the data in the CRM. 

When importing the phone numbers, I get the error code 1007 'invalid required property':

Add a country code for numbers outside the sub-account country when importing numbers. If the sub-account country is set to the US, you won't need to add a +1 (US country code) to the imported phone numbers. However, if you're importing numbers outside of the US, you will need to add the country code 

I.e. A sub-account that has set its business location to the US would need to add '+44 to call the UK. If the Sub-Accounts country is set to a different country other than the US (like - the UK, Australia, etc.), to call/SMS US numbers you would need to add a '+1 to the country's area code within the CSV File.

I'm trying to import a CSV with Notes, and I cannot generate more than one note per contact record.

When importing contact notes, you may only have one note per contact record with a limit of 5000 characters. 

I'm trying to export a CSV with Notes. 

As of now, We do not have any limit for CSV import for notes, and As per our current export behavior, we support Max of 255 Characters for the last note.