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Tips for preparing my data file if I'm not coming from another CRM
Tips for preparing my data file if I'm not coming from another CRM
Wealthbox Team avatar
Written by Wealthbox Team
Updated over a week ago

Our Onboarding team at Wealthbox will work with you to migrate your data from your previous CRM. However, if you are interested in importing a basic list of contacts, Wealthbox has a mapping tool that simplifies your import process. To ensure you are including all of your data and taking advantage of all the features within Wealthbox, we suggest you follow best practice steps below to cleanse your data file before importing into Wealthbox. Be sure to download the import template at the bottom of this article to use as a reference while preparing your import file.

  1. Households: Wealthbox allows you to link family members within a household. Each “person” needs to have a single contact record.
    To easily link the family members, you should create two columns within your Excel/CSV file; A “Household name” column (eg. "Smith, John and Jane") and a “Household title” column that you would populate with the relationship (eg. Head, Spouse, Partner, Child, Grandchild, Parent, Grandparent, Sibling or Other Dependent).
    Each person should be listed in their own row within the file, each including the Household name and their appropriate Household title.
    After importing the file, you will see a record for the “Household” as well as each individual person within the household. You will see the linked family members on the right-side panel of each record.

  2. Addresses: You will want to list an address as the “Mailing Address” to ensure addresses appear in report results. The following columns will need to be included in your contact import file:
    Mailing address type (include “Home”, “Work”, etc within the column for each row) and in the coordinating columns list the “Mailing Street”, “Mailing City”, “Mailing State”, “Mailing Zip”. The "Mailing" columns will automatically check the "Mailing address" box beside this address and include the type label provided.
    You can include additional columns for additional addresses with the appropriate column labels to apply the type, for example, "Home Street, Home City, Home State, Home Zip". These columns will map the additional address with the "Home" label applied but the address will not be marked as the "Mailing" address.

  3. Companies: If your data includes companies that need to be their own record including details (phone, address, etc), you will want to include these companies at the top of your contact list so they are imported first and they will be created as company records. Wealthbox allows you to link contacts to a company record. If your data includes people who work for these companies, you will want a separate row for the person's details and you should include the company name in the company column. When importing your contacts, Wealthbox automatically links the contacts employed by those companies to the appropriate company record. You can then open a company record to see a list of all your contacts employed by the company. You will want to make sure the company name is formatted consistently for all records or it could be duplicated. For example, ABC Inc. and ABC Incorporation would be created as two separate company records.

  4. Custom Fields: Review the fields within your data and compare them to the list of fields within Wealthbox to see if there are any fields you want to track but are not standard fields in Wealthbox. For those fields, you can create “Custom Fields” in Wealthbox prior to your import. The fields in your existing file can then be mapped to the newly created custom field when importing. Multi-checkbox fields which should include multiple options for a contact record can be included in a single cell with semi-colons (;) separating each option.

  5. Tags: Wealthbox has a tagging feature that allows you to add very detailed descriptions to your client (eg, Golfer, 529 Plan, 401K). When your contacts are imported you can add your tags within each record. We suggest adding a column to your import file labeled “tags.” You can add multiple tags to each contact by separating them with a comma within the same cell or by creating multiple columns all labeled “tags” to enter a single tag into each column. Each column would then need to be mapped to the “tags” field when importing to create the tag(s). Tags do not need to be created prior to importing your data. The import will create any tag that does not exist during the import. Keep in mind, if you do have pre-existing tags in Wealthbox, and your file includes these tag options, you will want the format the tags exactly as they are in Wealthbox or a duplicate tag could be created. For example, if you have a tag named "A-Client" but your file lists the same tag as "a-client", this tag would be created and be a duplicate of your existing tag.

  6. Unique ID: This "ID" field is very important if you need notes or additional data imported and linked to your contacts. Your past CRM should provide a unique ID for each record and should be mapped to our “External unique ID” field. Updates and additional related data can then be imported using the External unique ID as the key to identify the contact record.

  7. Tier or Hierarchy permissions: If your clients can be viewed by certain people in your office by levels (or tiers), we suggest creating your groups within the settings and then separating your contacts into files by those groups. When you import each file, you can choose the “visible to” settings for your importing records.

  8. Data Cleansing:

    1. Correct duplicates that are not obvious. For example, within the company field, you may have a record entered as “ABC” and in another record, you may have entered the same company as “ABC, Inc.” If the names are not matching, duplicate records will be created during the import.

    2. Sometimes we see random details in a field designated for specific details. For example, we might see a secondary phone number or SSN in a Middle name field. These details will map into the field they are in, however, some fields require specific formatting and may not support the text you have included in that field so it would get ignored or may cause the record to fail during import.

  9. Keep in mind, if you have contact files from more than one source, you will want to import the data where the most detail exists first. The import process will skip duplicates based on name, email and/or SSN, so you want to ensure the details exist in the first import for contacts that may exist in multiple sources. For example, if you choose to import your Outlook contacts, you may want to import your CRM contacts first to ensure phone numbers, emails, etc. are included in the contact records. After importing the contacts with all the details, you can then import from Outlook to capture any unique contacts that may not be found in your CRM.

NOTE: If you are using the contact import template, Row 2 provides details about the field in Wealthbox for reference but this row needs to be removed before attempting to import as the import will fail otherwise.

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