3. Importing 101

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Arlene Lessee. I’m a member of the training department here at DonorPerfect. And today’s topic is Importing 101. This is in your foundation series of webinars. I’m going to turn off my video right now, and we’re going to get Read More

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Arlene Lessee. I’m a member of the training department here at DonorPerfect. And today’s topic is Importing 101. This is in your foundation series of webinars. I’m going to turn off my video right now, and we’re going to get started. So one second, all right, so if you have any, I’ll call them informal questions, meaning you’d like me to repeat something, maybe you misheard, didn’t hear it, or maybe the sound didn’t come through.

You can put that in the chat. If it’s questions about the material, about the contents that I’m going to be going over, I would recommend that you put that in the Q and A also make sure that you have downloaded the PDF that accompanies this presentation. You’ll find that in the chat as well as in the Resources menu of zoom on the Documents tab. All right, and here we go with importing. So what we’re going to do is give you an overview of what importing does, why you might want to use it. We’re going to spend a fair amount of time talking about Excel, but not actually working in Excel. The point being that the more time you take and the more attention to details that you pay in preparing the Excel file before it’s imported, then that will lend itself to a successful import. Speaking of successful, we’ll talk about some tips that you’ll want to follow. There’s also going to be some requirements, some hard requirements that are needed. Others are going to be some suggestions. All right, so here we go. Let’s dive in. So there’s a lot to read here, but let me just boil it down. So assuming that you had a successful event, you were given or you collected names and addresses, emails, etc, of people who might want to learn more about your organization, and you did that, let’s say in Excel or maybe a Google Sheet. But how do you get them into DonorPerfect? Well, yes, you there is the more lengthy process of putting them in one by one, but if you have several dozen names, I would like to suggest that you try using this import tool, because you’ll find that much easier, much faster to transfer a large amount of data into your donor, perfect system all at one time, rather than spending time one by one, looking up and adding or editing previously existing constituents in your system. All right, so big picture, before we dive into all of the details that are required, big picture is that either you have a spreadsheet that’s been in Excel, or if it’s a Google Sheet, as I mentioned, you must download it to Excel, or it came from some other source, maybe some other platform, like access or FileMaker, etc. But the common language, so to speak, is going to be to start off with Excel. You’ll be then manipulating the data, hopefully minimal edits there, so that it can be in a format that can go into DonorPerfect seamlessly. That is the goal, all right. So we’re taking essentially from Excel into DonorPerfect. So the way that an import works, in terms of big picture is there is some setup.

Hopefully it’s minimal. Maybe there’s no setup at all, but there might be some that needs to be reviewed in terms of, what does that Excel file look like before it comes into DonorPerfect. Once you’ve, I’ll say, cleaned it up or formatted it to a way that DonorPerfect can use, then you’ll want to make a backup of your DonorPerfect database. Should something be probably not desirable in the database, I’m sorry, in the Excel. Spreadsheet, or maybe you imported the wrong spreadsheet. Okay, so always take that, what I call insurance policy by making a backup, which takes no time at all. Then you’ll go through the steps of importing the data. Sounds great, assuming that you have all the records that are imported successfully, we recommend that you check them out, not all of them, but just a handful. Check out that they went into the fields that you wanted them to go that the data that was in the spreadsheet did come in and make sure that you didn’t skip any columns by mistake. Okay, so if you’re a thumbs up and and you say, Yep, looks like you did a great job. Awesome, awesome. In some cases, there might be a need to merge duplicates that’s going to really depend on the matching criteria. We do have a video in the on demand series under merging duplicates, so we won’t be touching on that here, but I wanted to bring that up, just in case your import creates duplicate constituents. All right, so we’re going to go through just a couple tips and and suggestions, and I’m going to do a very I’ll call it small yet valuable import, to show you how a file and process would work that’s going to be seamless and be successful. All right, okay, so, as I mentioned, whether it starts in Excel, great, if not, if it’s starting from something else, then you need to download it, export it, or somehow convert it into an Excel file or download it from the start as CSV. After all, adjustments and corrections etc have been made, it ultimately needs to be saved as a CSV file, or it could be txt. The majority of your files will be CSV. If you haven’t done this at all, we have some sample templates for you found in the community, in the knowledge base, specifically, and your first row, what’s noted, what’s known as the header row needs to be the field names in DonorPerfect, I’d like to say that it needs to be a perfect match with the field names. Yes, there could be a misspelling. There could be a space or something between two words that we can, I’ll say, recover from but the cleaner it is in terms of matching the identical name of your fields, the faster it will go. And you want to make sure that each piece of information is in its own column. What does that mean? Well, the most likely example of that is going to be, let’s say, the name. So if you have first name and last name in one column in Excel, it could have been recorded that way, or it could have been downloaded from your previous or the other software. What’s going to have to happen, though, there is no one field called name, at a minimum, you’re going to have to separate them, or take the data and convert them into two different columns so that you have a first name field separate from a last name field. All right. So what I’m going to do, that’s just a little appetizer in terms of some setup and guidelines. I’m going to actually show you how to do an import. I’m going to before I do that actually bring up an Excel file.

Okay? So here is a file. We have some column I’m sorry, these columns here, aka row one, are the field names in donor, perfect. Now, not every column is filled in for every record, but we’ll talk about in one of the slides, the fact that we need this capital Y or capital N, if your file has a mixture of organizational records along with individuals or people here. Okay. So if your spreadsheet is only people, then this column is not needed. If it’s only organizations, you will need this column with capital wise all the way down, but more likely you’re going to have a mixture. So here we see capital Y as well as capital N, and all of these fields mean something. Notice here, anybody might be looking and say, Okay, I get what you’re talking about, Arlene, in terms of first name, last name, suffix, address, most of these are self explanatory, but we look here at O and P, and that is not so clear. Well, I’m going to go over the convention that needs to be followed when we’re importing into DonorPerfect, and we specifically need to check one or more values in what’s called a multi select field. Some of you may already be familiar with the flags field, and here, what we’re saying is, wherever there’s an X that means we want to check this flag that is B, M, underline C as the code board member current in this column, If we want to check the volunteer current code, we have it as a separate column. Okay, so I wanted to bring that up and show you here. Now let’s go into DonorPerfect. One of the rules, as I mentioned, is take a backup of your database. So from utilities, Backup and Restore. Very quick process, I’m going to click, create new backup. The oldest one will drop off.

So I wait patiently, voila, it’s done. That is, again, my insurance policy, just in case I imported the wrong spreadsheet or there was a major problem with the spreadsheet that I discovered later. Well, the only way to undo the import is by clicking on the Restore circle here to literally undo the data that was entered any point after this specific point in time. Okay, that also means if there’s anybody else doing data entry while you’re doing the import, it will undo their data entry if you need to roll back this back up, so be aware of that. All right, I’ve made my backup. I’m ready to go to utilities and import now there are three steps to this. I’m going to walk through quickly, because I will be doing it in a little more slow motion. This does suggest that there are sample import templates I’ll show you later, but that’s where I’m referring to some samples. To get you started, I’m going to find the file. It must be a CSV or TXT file that is physically on your computer or on the server. If it’s a Google sheet or something else that is on the cloud, it has to be downloaded to be a physical file, all right, to the extent that it is really physical. Okay, in this example, all I’m doing is leaving it on the default choice of updating existing records, meaning, if it finds someone in the database that is in the spreadsheet that I’m uploading, it’s going to look to see, is there any data different in the spreadsheet from what I already have in DonorPerfect. If so, it’s going to update that information. If it says, No, I don’t have those people at those addresses, then it’s going to or organizations, companies, etc. It’s going to insert them as new. Okay, my import file includes information going to what screen, or screens, in this case, just information on the main screen. If you have gift information as well as the name and address, then you would be choosing this option. So let’s go right now with main records, just name and contact info you’re going to need record matching that way it’s going to know what information is in Excel that could potentially already be in DonorPerfect, so that I can. Compare, oh, the last name’s the same, the first name’s identical. Their Street is the same, and the zip code is the same. For instance, therefore that means, okay, it’s the same donor. If something else is updated, or there’s new information in your file, like an email address that maybe was empty previously, great. I’m going to bring in the email address of the donor that I recognize as having already existed in DonorPerfect. So when you start out, you want to just confirm that the record matching is on last name, first name, address and zip, meaning it’s going to look to say that what’s in our Excel spreadsheet is identical for up to and including these number of characters in these specific fields, and data in these fields has to be filled in. It can’t be empty. So if I just have last name and first name, and some of them I have an address and zip, then you’re going to have to use just last name and first name. Okay. Click, OK. Here, there are some more options not used often, so I’m going to skip that for now. Click, next step, beautiful. Yes, look at that. I got the thumbs up because all of the fields in my file match the precise field names in DonorPerfect, meaning this first row, don’t worry about what order they’re in, but specifically how I’ve named them. And I don’t have spaces, and then I use an underline where needed that that matches 100% with the field names and DonorPerfect, great. I look at the file and say, Yes, that’s the file that I want to import. In case you say, oops, that one’s not finished yet. So this is where you would abandon what you’re doing if you say it’s not finished yet. Okay, let’s go to the next step. This is where it’s validating or examining with a magnifying glass each cell in your spreadsheet to make sure that the data is valid. So to speak, it’s not going to know whether Michael winter and this winter Inc is at this address or not, but when I say valid, it’s going to make sure that there is no odd letter here. It has to be a y or an N in this case, and that donor type matches the codes that are in DonorPerfect, and that this is the right way to designate that you want to add these flags to these constituents. Okay, so lots of rules behind the scenes that DonorPerfect is checking for, like that in a snap notice here the invalid records is zero, yay. That means that whatever’s on the pending Records tab, if I click final step, they will be brought into DonorPerfect. Great. Now, whether my spreadsheet is four rows, 40 or 400 rows, or any other number, be patient if it is a larger file, voila. It did that. Okay? Just to show you, that’s what you can look forward to when the process goes smoothly. Okay, beautiful. Well, unfortunately, we all know that life comes along and we might not have such a smooth sailing first experience. That’s okay. That’s why we’re here to kind of learn the tips, the requirements, the suggestions for how to ensure a successful import. All right, so I mentioned this, if you have a mixture, whether it’s just one company and 999 individuals, as long as there is a mixture of individual and organization records, then you will need to have a column anywhere in your spreadsheet called org underline rec, that means organization record, which is usually a checkbox above the Title field in your main screen, make it a capital N To designate that it it is an individual record, be it one person or a couple. Otherwise it’s a why, if it’s some form of an organization, company, foundation, nonprofit organization, government, etc, then we’re also recommending that you have another column. Column donor type which would actually have an underlying between the two words and that that is kind of in line with this or rec, if or REC is n, then your donor type is most likely going to be individual, or the code for individual if the org REC is y, then your donor type should be F, N, O, R, or C, O, those are the most common codes in that field. Okay, when it comes to dollars, when you’re importing gifts, which I will be doing in a little bit. Make sure there’s no physical comma in that field. Make sure that there is no physical dollar sign that was typed in a field or cell. Usually not an issue. But dates should be consistent if you are in the US and Canada, and if you’re going to have, let’s say August 7, eight, slash seven, slash 2024, I would assume you’re going to have that all the way down. But if you are in other countries, you might have the dates reversed, right? So it’ll be the day slash month slash year.

So in most cases, you’re not going to mix and match the date format, but we’re putting it out there just as a tip, a an extremely important so I am going to highlight this is that if any of the columns in your spreadsheet are coded fields, okay, if they are coded fields, the code must Be in DonorPerfect, before you do the import, as opposed to, if you have the description in your spreadsheet, no, it must be the code instead, and the code must be in DonorPerfect. Ah, okay. Kenyatta, sorry, I just noticed your question. Is it possible to do an import with ID numbers instead of field names? Okay, tech, when you say ID numbers, I presume you’re talking about the donor ID. If that’s the case, then definitely yes, but the field names must be in row one i There’s no way I can work around that. Okay, Jeannie, I see your hand is up, so I’ll look out for a question or comment from you. Okay, we, we can maybe explain that a little bit more Kenyatta when I bring up the next file. All right, so any fields like state, any fields like General Ledger, solicitation, etc, have to be codes in your spreadsheet, and those codes have to be in DonorPerfect beforehand. All right, hang on a second, getting familiar with this. All right, Jeannie, let me see. I saw something flash. Okay. Oh, no worries. No worries. Jeannie, okay. All right. So, yes, there are several rules, tips or constraints, but that’s why we’re here, discussing them. So as I just said, codes have to be in DonorPerfect before you import the spreadsheet. So for instance, if it were the fall appeal of of 2024 if I use F a 2024 and I put it in my spreadsheet, which sounds great. You have to make sure before you do the import that FA 2024 was added into code maintenance before the import process got it Okay, beautiful. And as I just alluded to, you cannot import the descriptions. You have to import the code. Now what’s the difference? In many cases, the code could be identical if I have a general ledger of education? Well, it’s one word, and it’s very possible that in your database, the code for education is the same as the description for education, but if we have a campaign called new capital campaign and. There may be three words separated by spaces. Is the description, but the code could either be NCC, or it could be new capital campaigns spelled out, but underlines between the words. So we’ll talk about the codes. Okay, it’s here. It’s a best practice. It’s really, to be honest, I think just for ease of legibility, is to put it in uppercase. It will take it if it’s lower or mixed case. So it’s really not a hard requirement to be in uppercase. Okay, so in our system, a little bit older than yours, we have codes that are two letters. Technically, it doesn’t matter. I think it has to be one digit at a minimum, but the maximum would be 30 characters that might exist in a code. Okay, now, the majority of your coded fields, or as it said on the previous screen, drop down or pull down fields. Most of them are what you would call single value, meaning my gift can only have one general ledger where I can own I’m only selecting one solicitation that was the reason for the gift, okay, but there are a few fields sprinkled into DonorPerfect that are what we call multi select fields, or multi select coded fields, or multiple choice, whatever you want to call it. The point being that in that type of field, someone can have nothing selected. They can have one selection, or they can have two or more. And notice here, as we have an example, column M and column n is the ever popular flag field. You will most likely be using that field to identify that constituents connection to your organization. So there is a very specific protocol or syntax that we call it, meaning, first you’re going to list or show the name of the field, just like the others, the name of the field goes there. But then we’re intentionally this was not a mistake. You’re then, let me see if I can get my annotate. There we go, a one second, okay, there intentionally is this at at symbol twice, okay. And then the code is the last portion. Now in your system board, current B, O, A, R, D, C, u, r, r, could be the code in our sample database. It’s just two letters. In my spreadsheet, it’s a little bit different that I’ll be importing, whatever the case is. Again, the code has to be used, but it’s all contained. And to the extent that you want to say, well, this donor should get this flag and that donor should get a different flag. In this case, this one is for volunteer. Great. They need to be separate columns, and it says, use the X to mark each record. So if I want to say that James Morgan needs to be indicated or checked as a board member with the flag, you’re going to use an x in that board member column on the row for James Morgan, Fred fine stone instead of Flintstone also an x in that column. Okay, so that is the very strict rule when it comes to importing in what we call multi select fields, aka flag is the most common. All right. So I’m talking in on several slides. I’m throwing out the words codes, right? The words code, the word code, can’t get it out, right? Okay, there are two places where you can view or even add codes. Doesn’t really matter, whatever you feel more comfortable with. On the left, we see code maintenance. This is found as the second item on the settings which is the wheel under the Settings menu. So when you first go in, it’s going to look like this. If any of you would love to have an Excel spreadsheet of every single code in the database that’s used or not even used, feel free to click Export to Excel for the entire list of every single code and description in your database. Otherwise, maybe. You just want to see what are the codes and descriptions in the solicitation field, then feel free to change the show only drop down to find it alphabetically, solicitation and click Go. And then, if you want to export that field, only great, or just view it on the screen. But if you want to add, you’re going to click Add after you have listed the specific field, okay, and then you’re going to put in just the code and the description. To be honest, it’s probably a whole lot easier to do within the data entry screens. So if you know that you want a new solicitation, I suggest you looking up any donor whatsoever, but adding a new gift, that way, you don’t inadvertently change a previous gift. So adding a new gift where everything’s blank, then what you’re going to do is click on the plus sign, and then you’re going to start typing fall appeal, 2024 and it will put it not only in the description, but it also put it in the code and remove any spaces that you had. The choice is yours. You can mix and match. Doesn’t really matter. You just have two places where you can either look at codes or add codes that need to be in your spreadsheet.

All right, so an extremely helpful tip. We’re all human. We can make mistakes. We can click too fast and not realize if we pulled the wrong spreadsheet, or again, if the spreadsheet was not completed yet. Please make a backup from utilities, backup and restore, and you’re going to click the button Create new backup. Very easy to do that the oldest back up there because three can be retained will be the oldest, one will be deleted. Now this next bullet relates to more more. So cleaning up data in probably the beginning stage of what you’re doing, I would guess that you’re not going to need to blank out fields. But something to keep in mind that if you have values in your spreadsheet and you want it to be blank in DonorPerfect, or you have, I’m sorry, in your spreadsheet you want to denote that, let’s say the solicitor field needs to be blank, just by having that column and the cell being blank for that donor, or multiple donors will not blank it out. All. I’m going to say for today is that, if that’s what you’re trying to achieve, please reach out to support, and they will explain the convention to make that happen in your import file. Okay, when I talked about the matching fields the first name, last name, address and zip, for instance, any field that is checked to be part of that matching field algorithm. Well, if it’s checked to be a matching field, it cannot be empty on any row whatsoever. So most common example, if you said that email address is the only matching field criteria, that’s perfectly fine. You can have one matching field, but if it’s empty for any one or more donors, those rows that actually you can’t even import that spreadsheet at all. So just be careful that those fields that are selected as matching must be filled in. Okay, a helpful tip, but not a requirement, especially if it’s your very first time, just take the first few rows, whether it’s four or five or six rows, and do a I’ll call it trial, to make sure number one as your first attempt to see that it’s going smoothly. Number two, did the fee? Did the data go to the fields that you wanted to? Or when you look it up and you say, oh, you know what, I didn’t fill in the salutation in my import? Okay, if that’s the case, either delete manually those constituents, or choose to restore the backup. I’m going to suggest that that will take a lot more time. Okay, and then, more importantly, make sure that the next go round that you do that you include that field salutation. Okay, but if that trial went smoothly, I would normally suggest deleting those rows that got imported. It’s technically, it’s not going to make a double donor. But me, personally, I just like to exclude it because I know that it’s already been done. Okay, I’ve been mentioning a CSV file if you’re working in Excel, which chances are you’re going to do most of your prep work as an XLS file, which is perfectly fine. Make sure that the ultimate, the very last save that you do that you have a CSV version of it, comma separated value. When you do that, Excel is going to look and see if you have more than one worksheet, because, unfortunately, that is not something that can be saved as CSV. So if you have multiple worksheets, for instance, maybe you’re importing gifts from July on one tab and another tab is June’s gifts and another tab is May’s gifts. Great. That might be beautiful in Excel when it comes to the Import each of those tabs or worksheets have to be their own CSV file. Okay, I might have a couple more slides, and then I know that you’re anxious for me to go in and demonstrate again. All right, these are the three steps, upload the file, make sure that all of the fields match, or they are ignored if, oh, I didn’t realize that I had the old systems ID number there. Okay, and then you import the data in a couple steps. So these three things, okay, uploading the file that I showed you on Step one, find the file. It must be a CSV or TXT file. The most common experience that you’re going to have is to leave it on, update existing records, then insert. The rest is new. So the person Kenyatta who asked, Can you use I assume you meant the donor ID is one of the columns. That’s definitely fine. Probably even preferred Kenyatta. If that’s the case, what you’re going to do is toggle the record matching to the off position, but still leave it on the update existing records. Okay, all right, so that is used most often. Then what kind of information, if it’s name and contact, maybe there’s some info that goes on the bio screen. It’s still considered to be main records only if it’s name and contact and gift transactions, then if you can read it, main records and gift notice here that I can’t have a combination of gifts and pledge paint, I’m sorry, pledges at the same time. So you must separate the data by having gifts different from your import of pledges. Should that be the case? I mentioned matching criteria, unless you have as cannot as suggesting and I’m assuming donor ID, unless your donor ID is a column in the spreadsheet, you must have record matching on and you must specify, or at least look at what are the fields used in matching. This is checked by default. Usually leave those number of characters if, for instance, your file does not have address and zip, then uncheck it. Okay, and maybe if you have email for everybody, fantastic. Use that as the matching criteria along with first and last name. Okay, sweet, All right, last but not least, on step one, there are some additional options. Most of the time, it is not used. If we have anybody here or anybody watching the video, if you are using any foreign language, then the file encoding would need to be UTF eight, the date format if you are out. Side of US and Canada, then the date format will need to be switched to be DD, slash, mm, slash, yy. I hope I did that four times. Okay, and possibly if Kenyatta you were referring to maybe a membership ID or the previous ID from a different database, then there is an option to match based on what we call an Alternate ID. That’s not the donor ID, all right. Hope that helps. So once you’ve identified or filled in things here, then you’re going to click on next step. These are the additional options that I mentioned the windows and see is us otherwise, UTF eight when it’s in order to accept foreign languages characters and the dates in the file, if it’s August 920, 24 leave it on the default. If it’s nine, August 2024 then you’re going to have to do day, day, slash mm, slash four wise.

Okay, next, hopefully you sail through this with the All, all fields match. Basically, your all systems go, okay. However, if it says, Wait a second, not so fast. I’ve got three fields here that either didn’t have something in row one, or the spelling, for instance, wasn’t right. Pro this says province. I’m assuming that was intended to be province. Well, if it doesn’t like the spelling, it’s going to hick up here and it can’t proceed. So either you say, exclude it, or, my bad, it was a spelling error. You find the table most likely DP for instance, and then to the right, you’re going to find the field that it should go into, which would be the state field, S, T, A, T, E is where us, states and Canadian provinces go postal code. Well, the field in DonorPerfect is zip. So while you may recognize it as postal code, the it would have to be the zip field in the main screen and payment method. Interesting, because technically, to protect payment card industry compliance regulations, we cannot import credit card info. So if that’s what we’re trying to do, that will not work. And I’m going to recommend you reach out to support if that’s something you were trying to do. Okay, if you say, my bad, sorry, I don’t want to bring in credit card info, then fine. You’re going to check the Exclude so either match every column in your spreadsheet or exclude it. Okay. Next step is, let’s do it. Let’s import the data. Well, it’s first going to what I’ll call scrub, but not necessarily clean. It’s going to validate and look at every single cell in your spreadsheet to make sure, as I mentioned earlier, if it’s a coded field, that the codes in your spreadsheet match the codes already, and DonorPerfect, if it’s a field that’s a y or an n, that it needs a y or an N, and that, if it’s a date field, that it has eight, slash eight, slash, 2024, and not August. 20, August, 8, comma, 2024, spelled out. All right, so all of the data rules are strictly met here. Therefore, if everything’s good, hang on a second. Let me get back that pen. Okay, if everything’s good, you’re going to rely on looking here at the pending records to make sure that that represents all of your rows in your spreadsheet. Hmm, another way of saying it is that invalid records. The goal is that that tab has a zero here, if it’s one, two or three, I’m going to show you what your options are in a little bit. If in. Valid records are zero. You are good to go, and you’re going to click the final step, either up here or down at the bottom, does the same thing, and import those records understood. All right, let’s get to it. I think one more slide so. Okay, and then, as we’re suggesting, especially when it’s your very first attempt or your first few, is please look up in DonorPerfect A few of the rows, ie the donors and or the gifts, and make sure it came in, exactly as you intended. Okay, at this point, I think now I’m gonna ask if we have any questions, because the remainder of the time is going to be doing the import. So anybody want to ask me a question?

Okay, no worries, no worries. Feel free to look at this video next time or when you are doing an import right now, you might be just kind of gathering info to see like, oh yeah, this could definitely work. You could see using it. Okay, all right. So here we go. Get ready. I want you to use the Q and A. I have questions and I really want answers. So let me pull up my spreadsheet.

Okay, let me auto fit every column so you can read it all right. I want you to tell me, and I’m going to give you a hint. On the left here, everything’s fine. On the right, I have planted some errors. Who can put in the Q, amp, a here. What errors are out there? Is there anything or things that you see that probably will be caught by donor, perfect doing the import and understood that you may not know the codes that are in my system. Okay, that’s fine. Then, if you want to make a guess, great. Or is there anything that definitely sticks out that you say that’s not right? Arlene, that’s not going to work. Anybody willing to guess here?

All right, so first off, I’m going to suggest that this remember I said row one needs to be the exact field names. There is no field in DonorPerfect called contrib. Instead, it’s going to need to be amount, but I’m going to leave it here so that you see what’s going on this field called fund. You may be used to calling it fund in your previous software, but DonorPerfect calls it GL, underline, code and what else, anything? Oh, look at this. We got a a, 24 and triple A 24 How come we have both? Something doesn’t smell good there. So, yes, I planted an issue. There. Anything else? No, I think we’re good All right, so I’m not going to fix the data here. The point of this second demo is to show you what happens when things don’t always go as you planned. Now, if you have two or more imports, I’m going to suggest two or more files that you make a second backup. That way you don’t have to undo the very first one as well. So in the interest of time, I’m not going to do it, but I’m conveying that to you is that if on any given day you are importing two or more files, play, please create a new backup before each one. Okay, I mentioned about some import examples that’s going to be either from the article or from going into the sorry knowledge base and looking up the article called Import templates. Well, I can get to it a lot easier from utilities import, okay. And clicking on this link here. Now feel free to review the different scenarios here. What I’m going to suggest is, if you’re in a position where you have a bunch of names and addresses, etc, in Excel, and for the most part, your DonorPerfect database is empty, or you just got a whole brand new list of names and gifts, then I’m going to suggest using this file. This is the ideal file, because use this as your example. Notice, oh, we’ve got some color here. This file, which is Excel, in order to show the colors. Okay, there we go. This is the row that has the field name, so instead of you guessing is a GL code run together? Is a GL space code? Nope, it’s GL underline code. So these are the commonly used field names. Oh, that’s interesting. I don’t know what’s on my screen, but that’s supposed to say reference. Okay, notice the cell value does say reference. Okay. So these are the field names. The blue are on Main the orange are on the gift screen. And this also gives you some tips in terms of what goes in this column if you use it at all, all right. So again, it’s not customized for each of you, but it’s customized or based on the donor, perfect based system that all of your databases started with. Okay? And if you’re not using certain columns, feel free to delete columns here, but that will get you what is frequently asked in terms of what are the field names? Arlene, how do I get them? Okay, all right. So we are ready to do the import of a bad file. I’m going to click here, choose file. Now you don’t have to name the file with the word bad. I just did so that I know that is the one that won’t work smoothly. So I pick that and I say, open. It’s going to hiccup here, as I like to call it, if it’s not a CSV, and if you choose the Excel version, which is going to happen often, don’t worry about that. Okay, when importing this file, well, these are new gifts that I haven’t put in, so I’m going to update existing donors. If they have. Are there, if not, I’m going to add them as new donors. But the kind of info that is included in my CSV file, this time I have gift transactions in addition to Main and contact info. All right, my record matching criteria. Nothing needs to be done. I’m pretty certain that those four columns are filled in for all of the rows in my spreadsheet. Okay, the show more options that I alluded to, if you need UTF eight, as I mentioned, otherwise, leave it on the default for Windows antsy for us, the dates are in mmdd, why? Why? Why? Why? And Alternate ID matching would only be used if you had some other ID, but most likely reaching out to support for assistance. There. Okay. Next step, it’s going to look at the file and see if it recognizes the columns. Ah, yep, my plant worked. Contrib, sounds like it maybe I put in donation dollar sign. Those would be logical choices. But unfortunately, it is not the exact name of the field and DonorPerfect. So we say, oh, right, the contrib field that’s on the gift screen, and that field is, Oh, my bad, yes. Amount is what it should have been called, great one down fund that is on the gift screen as well. And the field should be G, I remember G, l, code, great. Ref, oh, I didn’t notice that. Okay, that’s going to be gifts, and that pertains to the field called reference. There we go, which is the check number. Fantastic. All of my fields are matched, or if there were something that i. Checked over on the right to say exclude or ignore. Beautiful, yep, that’s the file. I recognize it next step. Okay, we wait patiently. Oh, that what I want to have, not really pending records is great if I didn’t see this and ignore these four records. If I click on Import, I will only be bringing in one row, ouch. This one for Mary Gibson. That means the four rows will not come in because there are errors or invalid data that has to be addressed. So I click on this invalid Records tab, I read this, oh, the gift type of CH is invalid. Okay, check with code maintenance, because it doesn’t like ch. Aa, 24 ah, doesn’t like that. Here’s a repetition of the CH and bldg. It doesn’t like so guessing codes, unfortunately, is going to come out in the wash here. So what I can do? I’m going to go with a little shortcut of I’m going to go with my intuition or memorization. I’m going to edit invalid records, where this becomes something that I can type in so the gift type the CH is something it didn’t like. I’m going to come over and look at, where is that ch? Here it is. Ah, I know in my system it should be. CK, here’s that ch again needs to be. CK, this triple A. It didn’t like, Yep, my A on the keyboard stuck. It only needs two A’s and last but not least, bldg was not legitimate code. It’s BF, if you didn’t know this by heart. Again, where you’re going to go is to code maintenance, to look up the codes in the GL or general ledger field, or look up the codes in the type of gift field, etc. All right, I’m going to try and revalidate the codes and see if the four goes away from here and then gets added to the pending column.
Survey says, Yes, beautiful, I addressed all of the errors like that. If you’re unsure of what does that error message mean, you’re going to reach out to support and they will help you, or they’ll look at the spreadsheet with you, if you have the phone and email support, okay, so therefore I’m good to go and I’m going to import the records.

Wait patiently for this beautiful if you want to export to CSV the file that was actually imported, great. It should resemble the original file, but actually, in this case, since I fix the data in DonorPerfect within this area, this file will be different. So take note of, oh, right, I can’t call that column contrib. If I’m going to do this again, I need to call that column amount and any other errors that you were aware of. All right, what I’m going to do before we wrap this up is check out a donor and show you that Miss Mary Gibson and her gift from july 22 came in. So I’m going to look for Mary Gibson. Great. She’s found here, excellent. Her last gift is 722 that makes me feel good. Beautiful. I see her donor type is filled in. I see her name and address that is gorgeous, gorgeous. I go to the gifts tab and, well, it’s a $0 gift, but this actually had $75 in the fair market value field, because she donated an entertainment basket, beautiful. And this is where the gift notes landed up. Love it, love it. So now I feel good. I’ve followed all of the rules, the suggestions, etc. And. I got my two files to import. So in summary, create a backup before you begin. If you’re importing one file, just one backup. If you’re importing more than one it’s not a bad idea to make a backup before each import.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out into the knowledge base and grab or look at the import templates there to give you an indication of what fields might be used and specifically what goes into row one for the field names each field type needs to be set up correctly in the import file. If not, it’s going to land on the invalid Records tab, as we saw. So please refer to these recommendations and requirements that we have discussed today the three types of import where the one that is used most widely is the one that’s already selected for you, which is update existing records, then otherwise insert them as new if it’s not an existing record, and check out a few records after the file has imported successfully to make sure that the data went in the fields that you wanted and that you did not miss any fields by I’ll say omitting that data in your spreadsheet. So I want to thank you so much for attending Importing 101, it’s been a pleasure for those of you who have been in all three sessions this week, thank you so very much for carving out three very important hours of your week. If anyone has some questions, I’ll be happy to stay a few minutes and answer them. Otherwise, I wish you all a Happy Friday and a wonderful weekend coming up, and it’s been my extreme pleasure having you.