Import customers, vehicles and parts

If you are moving from another shop system or a spreadsheet, importing is far faster than typing records one by one. AutoShop POS has import templates for contacts (customers and suppliers) and products (parts and services). This guide covers both, and explains how to handle vehicle records.

Before you start

• Finish business settings and create your labour services by hand; you only have a few of those.
• Create the categories, brands, units and tax rates your parts will use. The import matches them by name, so they must exist first. See set up tax rates and groups.
• Export customers and parts from your old system as spreadsheets.
• Use a spreadsheet program you are comfortable with, and keep a copy of the original export untouched.
• If you are switching from another product, read the switch page first.

Steps

1. Download the contacts template. Go to Contacts → Import contacts and download the template file. Open it and read the instructions row or table shown on the import screen; it lists which columns are required.
2. Fill in customers. Copy your customers into the template: contact type (customer), name, mobile number, address, tax number and opening balance if they owe you money. Keep one customer per row. Put a customer group name in the right column if you use trade or fleet pricing.
3. Clean the phone numbers. Use one format for every number, ideally with the country code (+1, +971 or +92). Duplicate customers usually come from the same number written two ways.
4. Import a test batch. Save ten rows as a separate file and import it. Open Contacts → Customers and check those ten look right.
5. Import the rest. Import the full file. Note the row number of any error shown, fix that row and import only the fixed rows.
6. Download the products template. Go to Products → Import products and download the template.
7. Fill in parts. For each part enter the name, SKU, brand, category, unit, whether stock is managed, alert quantity, purchase price, selling price and tax. Add opening stock and the location name if you want stock to arrive in the same import.
8. Import parts in two passes. Test with ten rows, check them, then import the full list.
9. Plan vehicles. Vehicle details (VIN, year, make, model, engine, plate, odometer) live on the job sheet and vehicle record. For most shops the simplest route is to capture each vehicle on its first visit after the switch. If you need your old vehicle history brought across in bulk, ask support before go-live and send them a sample of your export.

Check it worked

• The customer count in Contacts → Customers matches the number of rows you imported.
• Search for a few customers by phone number on the sell/POS screen.
• Open the stock report and spot-check ten parts for SKU, price and quantity.
• Open one imported part and check its category, brand and tax are filled, not blank.

Common problems

• “Category not found” or “Unit not found”. The name in your file is spelled differently from the one in the system. Match it exactly, including capitals and spaces, or create the missing item first.
• Prices come in at zero. The price cells contain currency symbols or commas. Remove them so cells hold plain numbers.
• Accented or Arabic and Urdu names look garbled. Save the CSV with UTF-8 encoding, or import the XLSX file instead.
• The import stops part-way. One row has an error and stops the batch. Fix the row the message points to and re-import only the rows that did not go in, to avoid duplicates.