Import Contacts and Accounts at the same time

📦 Install & Upgrade Help
1

Hi,

I have just installed SuiteCRM and I am trying to upload my contacts list from my email account.

I have noted that the Accounts excel template for bulk data upload is different from the Contacts one. Am I supposed to later link manually each one of the contacts manually with the account they are related to?

I have over 10,000 contacts so I hope there is a manual option for this.

Thanks for your help.

2

Hello,

What I mean is that the data import seems to be done in different steps, one per category (accounts, contacts, etc…). And later you have to establish the links among them manually.

This is OK for new contacts but very terrible for importing data from other platforms.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there any other way to import Contacts linked to Accounts at the same time?

Thanks

3

You have to import first Accounts and then Contacts. When importing contacts SuiteCRM will chek if the Account name corresponds to an existing account and, if it does, it will create the relationship.

In my opinion (as you suggested too) this is a very weak way of doing it.

However, personally, before importing anything in the CRM I spend a lot of time normalising my data to avoid any surprises. Among the things I do I assign a unique GUID to each unique Account and also to each Contact. When I import I also use the Account ID field and in this way I solve my problems.

I also have a custom field both in Accounts and Contacts which I use to identify the import batch so that it is easier to revert any wrong import or, in any case refer to it.

I suggest that, before you import 10.000 records you do a few tests (better on a test instance) to make sure you have everything right. Additionally I also recommend that you check and set the correct SuiteCRM and Apache/PHP resources and settings values that affect importingsuch a high number of records.
Last suggestion: import everything in (much) smaller batches because, if something fails you will have difficulties in getting things back to a clean situation.

I hope that this will be useful.

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