Use the following tips to ensure your import goes smoothly:

• Quotation marks have been known to cause issues during import, so we recommend that you remove them from the data.

• Do not include currency signs.

• Use a minus sign to indicate a negative number, not parentheses.

• If you use one of our templates, do not re-organize the columns in the Excel spreadsheet. The import process will expect the data to be organized as we have presented it in the templates.

• When you are ready, you will save the Excel spreadsheet as a comma-separated file (.CSV), so any commas in your data (e.g., “ACME, Inc.”) may cause issues.  We suggest that you remove the commas.

• When converting to .CSV, any column that holds or ever held data will be included in the file.  If you have entered data into a new column (i.e., not one of the columns identified with a column heading in the original Excel spreadsheet), this will cause an issue during the import process. Therefore, you should delete any new columns that you may have touched while entering your data.

• The import process will view the column headings as individual records to be created, so the last step after saving the file to .CSV is to open the new file in Notepad and to remove the header information.  (We recommend that you create the .CSV file with the headers.  This instructs the software to account for all columns expected by the import, whether you have data in the fields or not.)

• Close the import file before beginning the import process.

• Do not include percentage (%) signs within the data.