PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Porta Potty Rental Software

Importing Your Customer List From a CSV File

Your customer list is the most valuable thing you'll move into new software. Typing it in by hand takes days and invites typos. In Switching Porta Potty Rental Software Without Missing a Service Day, the CSV import was step one. This article goes through it in detail: what a CSV is, how to prepare one, and what to do once it's in.

What a CSV File Is

A CSV, short for comma-separated values, is a plain spreadsheet file. Each row is a customer, and each column is a piece of information: name, phone, email, address. Almost every spreadsheet program can save as CSV, and most business software can export one. If your customers are in a spreadsheet today, you're most of the way there.

PortaPottyBossPro takes a CSV import of an existing customer list.

Getting the File

Where the file comes from depends on what you use now:

• A spreadsheet: open it and save or export it as CSV.
• Another system: look for an export or download option for customers or contacts.
• Paper or a phone's contact list: this is the one case where you'll need to build a spreadsheet first, but it's worth doing once.

Export everything you can. It's easier to ignore a column you don't need than to go back for one you missed.

Cleaning the File Before You Import

Ten minutes of cleanup before the import saves hours afterward. Go through the file and:

• Remove duplicate customers. The same contractor entered twice under slightly different names is the most common problem.
• Put each piece of information in its own column: first name, last name or company, phone, email, street, city, state or province, postal code.
• Fix obvious typos in phone numbers and emails, since those are how alerts and invoices reach people.
• Delete customers you'll never serve again, if you're sure.

Keep a copy of the original file before you change anything.

Watch for one more thing: a single customer row that really holds several places. A contractor in your old spreadsheet may have one row with three addresses crammed into a notes column. Import the contractor once as a client, then add each address as its own job site afterward. That keeps their history together and sets up monthly statements correctly.

Running the Import

Bring the file into PortaPottyBossPro with the CSV import and match your columns to the fields in the software. Once it's done, spot-check a handful of customers: open a few you know well and make sure the name, phone, email and address landed in the right places. If something looks off across the board, it's usually a column matched to the wrong field, and it's easier to fix the file and import again than to correct records one by one.

What the Import Doesn't Do for You

A customer list gets you clients. It doesn't carry your operating details: which units are on which site, how often each site is serviced, when rentals were delivered. Those come next, and they matter more than anything else for the first week.

After the Import: Sites, Units and Services

For each active customer, set up the job sites. A homeowner has one; a contractor may have several. On each site add contacts and gate or access notes. Then add the jobs with their units: type, quantity, unit numbers and placement notes. Set up weekly service on the sites that get it. For rentals already out, enter the delivered date and the rental terms so rental tracking picks up correctly.

Once that's done, the Waiting List shows what's due, and you can build your first dispatch board.

Do this part with your route sheets or your drivers next to you. They know which sites have four units and which have six, where the units sit, and which gate code changed last month. An hour with your most experienced driver while you enter placement notes is worth more than any import.

Tags and Custom Fields

While you're working through customers, add tags such as Contractor, Events or Homeowner, so you can sort them later. If your old spreadsheet had columns that don't fit anywhere else, such as a PO number or a preferred billing contact, use custom fields to hold them instead of stuffing them into notes.

Geocoding and the Map

The Waiting List map places pins from addresses. Clean, complete addresses with city and postal code place correctly; partial addresses may not. After import, glance at the map. A pin in the wrong town or no pin at all usually means an address needs fixing on that site.

Start With What's Active

You don't need every customer from the last ten years in perfect shape on day one. Get your active customers right, the ones with units out or weekly service, and clean up the rest over time. For how imported customers flow into the rest of the system, see the porta potty rental software overview.