Importing your data

Everre reads the file you already have. A spreadsheet of buildings, an export from another CRM, a call list your data provider gave you — drop it in and we work out what is in it.

Nothing is added to your workspace until you have seen what we intend to add.

Getting started

Go to Database and choose Import, next to New.

Drop in everything you have at once. If you exported from another CRM you will have several files — upload all of them together rather than one at a time, because the connections between them live in that set. Import them separately and every link between a contact and their company is lost.

We read CSV, Excel and multi-file exports.

What we found

The first screen tells you what each file is, how many rows it has, and how confident we are.

Where we were not certain, it says so. Check those. Something read as the wrong kind of record is the one mistake that is tedious to unpick later, and it takes a moment to correct here.

If your rows hold more than one thing — a building, its owner, and a contact for that owner, all on one line — you will see that too, listed as the separate records we intend to create from each row.

Check the columns

We have already matched the columns we recognise, so this screen is a review rather than a form to fill in. What needs your attention is at the top of each list; everything already matched is folded away behind Show all columns.

Every column has three possible outcomes:

• A field — it goes into that field on the record.
• A custom field — we keep it and it is searchable, but it is not one of our built-in fields. This is what happens to anything we do not recognise. Cap rate, mortgage details, a reference number from your old system: kept, not discarded.
• Left out — not imported. Only useful for your old system's own ids and timestamps, which mean nothing here.

Nothing is thrown away without you choosing to throw it away.

How the records fit together

If a row holds several records, this screen decides how they connect: which entity owns the building, and who the people are to that entity.

The proposal reads a row the way a county record does — the entity named alongside a building holds title to it, and the person named with them is the contact you would ring. If your file means it the other way round, change it here. It is one dropdown, and it decides what your ownership records look like afterwards.

What counts as the same record

This is the screen that matters most, and it is the one people skip.

The same owner usually appears on many rows — a holding company that owns forty buildings is on forty lines of your spreadsheet. This screen decides whether that becomes one company or forty.

You will see the count as you change it:

2,942 rows → 855 companies

If that number looks wrong, it is. Grouping companies on name and mailing address keeps two firms that share a name apart; grouping on name alone merges them. There is no correct answer for every file — but there is a correct answer for yours, and the count tells you when you have it.

Underneath, choose what happens when we already have a record:

• Fill in the blanks — keeps what you have and adds what is missing. Nothing you typed is overwritten. This is the default and it is usually right.
• Leave mine alone — your record is untouched, the incoming one is not added.
• Merge them together — folds the two into one record.

While it runs

Large imports take a few minutes. You can close the window — it keeps going, and the numbers you see are records actually landing in your workspace rather than a progress bar guessing.

Rows we could not use are listed with their row number and the reason. The rest of the file still comes in: one bad postcode does not cost you the other three thousand rows.

If it went wrong

Undo this import is on the report, and it removes everything that import created.

Records it only filled in stay as they are. If you had a contact and the import added their mobile number, undoing does not take the number back out — that change cannot be separated from the rest of the record without throwing away work you did yourself.

Importing the same file twice

Safe. Records we already brought in are recognised rather than duplicated, so re-importing a file that grew by fifty rows adds the fifty and leaves the rest alone. This is the way to fix rows that failed: correct them in your spreadsheet and import the same file again.

Asking the assistant instead

If the export is already in Everre — forwarded as an email attachment, or uploaded to your drive — you can ask the assistant to read it:

Import the spreadsheet I just forwarded

It reads the file and tells you what it would create, including anything worth checking, and waits for you to say go. It cannot import without you approving what it found.