Importing Members into your database

Preparation of your spreadsheet

Many organisations use Excel spreadsheets to record and keep track of their membership details.

If this sounds like you then you can upload this spreadsheet directly into Member Wizard and avoid having to enter each member manually.

The process involves a number of steps which we have outlined below but never fear! If you find it difficult or you don't feel confident preparing your spreadsheet simply email it to support@memberwizard.com.au provide your contact details and we will be in touch with you to assist.

Preparing your Spreadsheet for Importing:

1. Firstly you need to make a copy of your membership file. This means your original file will remain unchanged and you will be working from the copy leaving the original intact.
2. To make a copy open your spreadsheet membership file and then select SAVE AS from FILE in the Excel menu bar. Name your copy something easy to find and store it somewhere easy to find such as your Desktop. You can delete it after your members have been imported.
3. Remove all rows from the copy of your spreadsheet which do not contain an actual member record. This means you should not have any blank rows. You must however leave the heading row for us so you can identify what each column contains. It does not matter what order your members are sorted. An easy way to remove blank rows in your spreadsheet is to sort the data in the first column, it doesn't matter if you sort it higher to lower or visa versa. Expand the selection when prompted. This will effectively remove all blank rows in your spreadsheet.
4. Next look at the data in your columns. If you have a column for a member's email address then make sure that it ONLY has the email address in it and not any comments which may be there. If there are any columns which contain important comments, add a column to the end end of the row and call it Comments and put the comment in there. They will be imported into the Comments field for that member.
5. Look at your phone number columns. Member Wizard provides for up to three Phone number fields which you can name as you like - for instance, Home, Work, Mobile - but the columns need to contain consistent data. In other words if the mobile number is in Column G in your spreadsheet then each member's mobile number needs to appear in Column G. If the member does not have a Home/Work/Mobile number then just leave it blank. Any Column can be blank except for the Last Name column.
6. Make sure all phone numbers are comprised of digits. Some people do still use a capital letter O for zero. Change this. Numbers starting with a zero are difficult for spreadsheets as they typically remove the 0 which of course you don't want for telephone numbers. To stop this from happening you need to put a ' in front of the leading 0 for all telephone numbers. Excel will not display the ' but it will change the column so that you can display the leading 0 in front of the phone number.
7. Regarding dates, make sure your spreadsheet has the date format set at DD-MM-YYYY. Start Date refers to the date the member first joined your organisation. Paid to date is as the name suggests when their membership is paid up till.
8. These next couple are a bit of a pain. The first and last names have to be in separate columns. If you have hundreds of members, you don't know how to use Excel to do this and this is too big a job then send it to us using the email address above and we will handle it.
9. The street name/number and the suburb, postcode etc all need to be in separate columns. Again if you have hundreds of members and don't know how to use Excel to do this then leave it to us.
10. If your member is in any groups eg committee you can also import that information as well. Member Wizard offers 4 options for each column imported - Standard (these are columns which map directly to existing Member Wizard fields such as Surname), Custom (these are columns which contain information which Member Wizard does not map to a standard field but the system will create a field for you and you can name it whatever you wish), Do not Import (for information you do not wish to import) and Groups (the system will create a group called the same as your column heading so you need a column for each group). If your member is in a group make sure there is a True in the relevant Group column, else there should be False. 
11. You can import your Inactive as well as your Active members. Include a column in your spreadsheet called Active? and then enter the word either True or False beside each member's name on the spreadsheet. You can view Inactive members after importing them by changing the Status field at the top of the Member List to Inactive.
12. Once these tasks are complete, click the Select Your Spreadsheet button at the bottom of the import members page.
13. The system will show you on the next screen a layout of the columns in your spreadsheet and the names in the headers of your columns. There are 3 field types you can import - Standard fields, Custom fields, Groups. There is also an option to NOT import a field. 
14. Standard fields are those that are common to all organisations. Click the orange field and select which Standard Field in Member Wizard matches the data in your column. 
15. Custom fields will be created by the system. You can rename them later in Settings/Custom Fields if you wish.
16. Groups can be used to enter members into any group they may already be in. If you wish to use this then the name of the group must appear in a column in the member's record row in your spreadsheet. You will need a column for each group. If the member is part of the group then the group name should appear in the relevant column on their member record row in the spreadsheet. You can rename groups later if you wish in Members/Manage Groups. You can also add members to groups later once they are imported if you do not wish to do so in during the import process.
17. Once you have selected a match for each column in your spreadsheet click the Next button. The data will be displayed on the screen and you should check it carefully to make sure it is how you wish it to be. On clicking Import the system will first run a scan over your data and any problems will appear in a list in a pop up. Be aware that since you have a Header line in your spreadsheet with the column names in it that the line number where error's occur will be one more than it should be in your actual spreadsheet. 
18. If the system did detect any errors you must go back to your spreadsheet, correct the issue and then start over selecting your spreadsheet to load the revised member list.
19. IMPORTANT: You can not import data twice without duplicating it all. Member Wizard does not use member name as a unique field so if you try to fix a bad import by importing again you will end up with the data being imported twice and there will be a duplicate entry for each member in the database. If you need your data deleted then email support@memberwizard.com.au and we will be able to do it in the back end in a few seconds.
20. When all the data is correct and it imports you will be advised it has successfully imported.