When importing a lead or a customer, Method will also create an associated contact for each lead or customer. Remember, in Method, there is a difference between Contacts and Customers.
Before you begin, you may want to make sure you have the proper permissions. Please see our article Giving Access to the Import / Export Tool.
In this article, we will cover:
Lead and Customer Import Templates
When importing any file, it is important to understand which fields are needed and how to populate them.
Below are sample Excel templates to use for importing a lead or a customer:
Excel template for QuickBooks Desktop users (for leads and customers).
Excel template for QuickBooks Online users (for leads and customers).
Excel template for Xero users (for leads and customers).
The above spreadsheets will show how your import files should be formatted. It includes:
Required fields
Commonly-used fields (Do not alter the field names in the first row)
Field length restrictions (Hover over field names to see comments)
Sample data (Replace with your own data)
The following is a list of the column headers we’ve included for you. The character maximum length will be indicated in brackets.
CompanyName (41): Lead’s company name.
Name (41): Required field. This field is the display name that syncs to QuickBooks. Normally the first and last name, or the your company name.
FirstName (25): Required field only for QuickBooks Online. First name of your lead.
LastName (25): Last name of your lead.
Contact (41): Name of the contact for your lead. Method:CRM automatically creates a contact for each lead based on the Name field.
Phone (21): Main phone number for this lead.
Email (1023): Lead’s email address.
BillAddress fields (each at 41): There are three fields marked BillAddressAddr# and are provided in addition to BillAddressCity, BillAddressCountry, BillAddressState and BillAddressPostalCode. The BillAddressAddr fields are typically used for the lead name, street address, and suite number if necessary.
If there are other fields you want in the template, you can add them in. Please view the Customer table to see which fields are available. If you have custom fields, you will need to add them to Customer table first.
Notes to consider when importing
When importing your customer or lead, follow the regular process of:
However, when selecting a data type, select either Leads or Customer:
Duplicate Customers
When you get to the section Import or Update Records, there is a special case for Leads or Customers because you may have the same customer but with different contact information.
For example:
In the above image, there are two rows with Great Gulf Sports in the Name column, but note the FirstName , LastName , and Email columns are different. In cases like this, you may want only one customer to be imported, and the other rows to be imported into the Contacts table as contacts.
Using the scenario above:
Great Gulf Sports - Imported as a customer into the Customer table
Travis Beam - Imported as its main contact into the Contacts table
Paige Park - Imported as a second contact into the Contacts table
However, you can specify another column to identify the customer by choosing a Unique Field in the dropdown:
If you specify a different field, like the CompanyName , then this field will be used to identify a customer.
Reviewing your Lead / Customer import
When you get to the Next Steps section, you can review your import:
Note that Records shows how many Contacts will be created as well as how many customer records will be created or updated.
Remember, with every new customer record, there will always be at least one newly created contact. A customer record cannot exist without a contact record and vice versa.
Assigning a Method User to a Customer Lead
Every lead or customer can be assigned to an existing Method User. Selecting a Method User will assign that Method user to every record imported.
