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If you are moving from another system or already have a list of your clients, you can import them directly into Timely. This saves you time entering each client manually, letting you focus on doing what you love. To ensure your data imports correctly, we use a specific CSV (comma-separated values) template; which can be downloaded here. In this article, you will learn a how to download and complete the customer import template. When you are ready, see our help guide How to import your customer import CSV file into your Timely account for next steps.
Important note: if you are not sure how to export your client data from your current system, no problem - submit a Help Form via our help centre and one of our friendly team will guide you through it.
How to download the customer import template
Important note: do not change the column headings in the customer import template - they match specific fields in your Timely account. If you change them, your import will not work. If you're moving from another software and already have a customer list, simply copy the customer details from your existing file and paste them into the matching columns in the Timely CSV template.
How to complete the customer import template
Section-by-section guidance
Customer / Client Name
Copy your customers' first names from your existing spreadsheet and paste these into the first name column in the Timely customer data import template. Continue this process across the spreadsheet, copy-and-pasting your data into their relevant columns.
SMS Number
When entering SMS information, make sure your customers' mobile numbers are in the correct format for SMS to ensure they import correctly. Timely will automatically add the international dialling prefix to SMS numbers to ensure they import as valid phone numbers. Please note, your phone numbers should not include the leading zero (0) if you’re adding the international code.
Correct: +64 21 123 4567 (or 64211234567 without the plus sign)
Incorrect: 021 123 4567
Email Address
For email addresses, they will import successfully as long as they are in a valid format, including the email host (e.g gmail, hotmail, yahoo, outlook etc) and don’t include extra text, such as “work” or "personal" before or after the email address.
Correct: timely.test@gmail.com
Incorrect: timely.test@gmail.com (work)
Date of Birth (DOB)
Now, an extremely important field to get right is your clients date of birth (DOB). The date of birth field must be formatted with the year first, followed by the month, and then the day (YYYY-MM-DD). After copying your clients' date of birth into the spreadsheet, highlight the entire DOB column and apply the correct date format to ensure it imports properly.
Correct: 1985-07-15 for July 15th, 1985
Incorrect: 15-07-1958 for July 15th, 1985
Gender / Pronouns
For the gender field , you can enter the full pronoun, such as “male”, “female”, "Non-Binary" or short-hand labels like "M", "F", "NB" - both lowercase and uppercase are accepted.
Additional Information
You are also able to identify your VIP clients by using the word true in the column under VIP and if they are a VIP client you do not need to put false into that field. The same applies if you want to record whether a customer has allowed SMS marketing. If they have, simply enter the word “true” in the appropriate column.
Important note: once you’ve copied all your customer details into the Timely spreadsheet, be sure to save or download the file as a CSV - that stands for comma-separated values - to ensure the import works correctly.