Bulk importing customers can save significant time when setting up your Hoops account.
Before importing large numbers of customers, we strongly recommend using Hoops for a few weeks to become familiar with how customer records are structured.
Many systems, particularly accounting platforms, handle Companies and Contacts differently to Hoops. Understanding this structure before importing will help you organize your customer data correctly and avoid cleanup work later.
Please review these docs before performing a customer import:
Let's look at the steps.
Access the Import Screen
Click Customers in the left-hand main menu and then click Import in the top right-hand side.
Step 1: Download Template & Populate Your Data
Download the Hoops template file.
Populate Template
Open the template file in Excel. It is populated with example customers showcasing two different structures. The most important thing is to not remove the header row or alter any of the header names, as the header defines the import.
Required Fields
The required fields are highlighted in yellow below. The very bare minimum information required for a customer to be added to Hoops is First Name and Contact Email. The import structure is therefore the same, your contacts will not be imported unless then have a First Name and Contact Email
Understand Customer Types
Note that individual customers, like Rachel Green in the example below, do not have a company name, while company customers, like Carlsbad High School, have separate contacts.
If you have many Company type customers, you will need to ensure that the Company Name and Company Email field for all contacts related to this company are the same.
The example below highlights that Billy Jones and Jill Smith have different contact email addresses, but have a common Company Name and Company Email. This mean that the import will recognize these contacts as being bundled under the same Company.
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Test a Few Customers First!
We strongly recommend that you prepare your import file, then create a copy and remove all but 5-10 customers. Do a test import of only those customers. Should the import not work as anticipated, this makes it much easier and quicker to remove these customers.
Step 2: Upload File
After populating and saving your file, you can upload it by clicking to upload or by dragging and dropping it into the drop zone.
Step 3: Import
Click Import and then Got It. The import runs and you should see your customer list populate very quickly.
The Result
Rachel Green as a single individual contact
Carlsbad High School with both Billy Jones and Jill Smith as separate contacts:
