How does importing suppliers work?
Our import feature allows you to bulk add or update your suppliers by uploading a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that contains a single sheet of supplier data structured into specific columns.
How do I bulk add suppliers?
Go to Contacts > Suppliers > Suppliers.
Click the Import button in the top right.
Tick Adding new suppliers under Which type of import you are doing?
A help box will appear telling you how to structure your spreadsheet columns correctly, see How do I structure my spreadsheet columns?
Once you've structured your spreadsheet columns, add the supplier data, see What data do I provide when adding suppliers?
Once you've added your data, click the Choose File button to open a File Explorer window and select the spreadsheet from your computer.
Click the Import button.
If there have been any issues with your data, an error message will be displayed with the row number and issue. Make the relevant changes to your spreadsheet then repeat the process above from step 6.
How do I bulk update suppliers?
Go to Contacts > Suppliers > Suppliers.
Click the Import button in the top right.
Tick Updating existing suppliers under Which type of import you are doing?
A help box will appear telling you how to structure your spreadsheet columns correctly, see How do I structure my spreadsheet columns?
Once you've structured your spreadsheet columns, add the supplier data, see What data do I provide when updating suppliers?
Once you've added your data, click the Choose File button to open a File Explorer window and select the spreadsheet from your computer.
Click the Import button.
If there have been any issues with your data, an error message will be displayed with the row number and issue. Make the relevant changes to your spreadsheet and then repeat the process above from step 6.
How do I structure my spreadsheet columns?
Your spreadsheet must be of the .xlsx file type and only contain one sheet, any additional sheets will be ignored.
The first row of the spreadsheet must list the column headings in separate columns, see What are the columns for adding suppliers? and What are the columns for updating suppliers? for the supported headings. All column headings should be in uppercase.
An easy option for structuring a spreadsheet is to first export your suppliers, this will download a spreadsheet of the correct file type (.xlsx) that already has most of the columns that are used for adding or updating. You can then use the downloaded spreadsheet as a template.
You can add additional columns to the spreadsheet by adding a new column and entering a supported column heading into the first row of the new column. If you wish to remove any columns, simply delete them from the spreadsheet.
What are the columns for adding suppliers?
When adding suppliers, the NAME, CURRENCY_CODE, BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_1, BILLING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY and BILLING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE columns are required, all other columns are optional. The supported columns are as follows:
NAME
FRIENDLY_ID
CURRENCY_CODE
PHONE_NUMBER
EMAIL_ADDRESS
WEBSITE_URL
CONTACT_PERSON_FULL_NAME
INTERNAL_NOTE
MAILING_ADDRESS_LINE_1
MAILING_ADDRESS_LINE_2
MAILING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY
MAILING_ADDRESS_STATE_PROVINCE_REGION_COUNTY
MAILING_ADDRESS_ZIP_POSTCODE
MAILING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_1
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_2
BILLING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY
BILLING_ADDRESS_STATE_PROVINCE_REGION_COUNTY
BILLING_ADDRESS_ZIP_POSTCODE
BILLING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE
XERO_CONTACT_NAME
ACCOUNT_NUMBER
PAYMENT_TERMS
What data do I provide when adding suppliers?
When adding suppliers using the import feature, it is important that data you provide meets certain guidelines to avoid any issues. The guidelines are as follows:
Each row of your spreadsheet is read as a single supplier.
NAME - must be provided and cannot exceed 100 characters.
FRIENDLY_ID - must be unique, only contain letters, numbers and hyphens and cannot exceed 100 characters.
CURRENCY_CODE - must be provided and reference an existing currency code (i.e. USD, NZD, etc).
PHONE_NUMBER - cannot exceed 20 characters.
EMAIL_ADDRESS - must be a valid email address and cannot exceed 320 characters.
WEBSITE_URL - must be a valid URL and cannot exceed 2000 characters.
CONTACT_PERSON - cannot exceed 100 characters.
INTERNAL_NOTE.
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_1 - must be provided and cannot exceed 100 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_2 - cannot exceed 100 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY - must be provided and cannot exceed 50 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_STATE_PROVINCE_REGION_COUNTY - cannot exceed 50 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_ZIP_POSTCODE - cannot exceed 10 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE - must reference an existing country.
XERO_CONTACT_NAME - Xero must be connected and must reference an existing Xero contact name.
ACCOUNT_NUMBER - cannot exceed 20 characters.
PAYMENT_TERMS.
What are the columns for updating suppliers?
When updating suppliers, the SUPPLIER_ID column is required, all other columns are optional. The supported columns are as follows:
SUPPLIER_ID
NAME
FRIENDLY_ID
CURRENCY_CODE
PHONE_NUMBER
EMAIL_ADDRESS
WEBSITE_URL
CONTACT_PERSON_FULL_NAME
INTERNAL_NOTE
MAILING_ADDRESS_LINE_1
MAILING_ADDRESS_LINE_2
MAILING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY
MAILING_ADDRESS_STATE_PROVINCE_REGION_COUNTY
MAILING_ADDRESS_ZIP_POSTCODE
MAILING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_1
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_2
BILLING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY
BILLING_ADDRESS_STATE_PROVINCE_REGION_COUNTY
BILLING_ADDRESS_ZIP_POSTCODE
BILLING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE
XERO_CONTACT_NAME
ACCOUNT_NUMBER
PAYMENT_TERMS
What data do I provide when updating suppliers?
When updating suppliers using the import feature, it is important that the data you provide meets certain guidelines to avoid any issues. The guidelines are as follows:
Each row of your spreadsheet is read as a single supplier.
SUPPLIER_ID - must be provided and must reference an existing supplier (you can get these by doing a supplier export).
NAME - cannot exceed 100 characters.
FRIENDLY_ID - must be unique, only contain letters, numbers and hyphens and cannot exceed 100 characters.
CURRENCY_CODE - must reference an existing currency code (i.e. USD, NZD, etc).
PHONE_NUMBER - cannot exceed 20 characters.
EMAIL_ADDRESS - must be a valid email address and cannot exceed 320 characters.
WEBSITE_URL - must be a valid URL and cannot exceed 2000 characters.
CONTACT_PERSON - cannot exceed 100 characters.
INTERNAL_NOTE.
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_1 - cannot exceed 100 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_LINE_2 - cannot exceed 100 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_TOWN_CITY - cannot exceed 50 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_STATE_PROVINCE_REGION_COUNTY - cannot exceed 50 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_ZIP_POSTCODE - cannot exceed 10 characters.
BILLING_ADDRESS_COUNTRY_TITLE - must reference an existing country.
XERO_CONTACT_NAME - Xero must be connected and must reference an existing Xero contact name.
ACCOUNT_NUMBER - cannot exceed 20 characters.
PAYMENT_TERMS.
If a supported column is provided without any supplier data, then that value will be cleared from the relevant suppliers, e.g. if a PHONE_NUMBER column was provided without any data then the phone number of the relevant supplier would be cleared.
Some supplier values cannot be empty (name, friendly_id, currency_code, etc) so if those supported columns have been provided, then they must contain data.
Troubleshooting
Despite our best efforts, there are still things that can go wrong while importing suppliers, here are some issues that have previously been encountered:
Some numeric values are incorrect and contain an 'E+' - This is a behaviour of Microsoft Excel, when you enter a value above a certain length into a cell that is using the number data format, Excel automatically converts that number into a scientific notation with a decimal place after the first digit and an 'E+' near the end To fix the problem do the following:
Open the spreadsheet in Excel and open the Data tab at the top of the page
2. Select the entire column that you are having an issue with by clicking the letter above the column heading (the whole column should be highlighted) then click the Text to Columns button.
3. This will open the Text to Columns wizard, click the Next button to skip through steps one and two. On the third step, select the Text checkbox and click the Finish button.
4. You should then see a small green triangle in all of the cells in the selected column indicating that they are now set to the text data format and can be imported correctly.