Bulk import vehicles from a spreadsheet

Moving from another workshop system, or from the spreadsheet you have been keeping for nine years, does not mean typing every car in. Open Vehicles, then Bulk Import.

This is free. You need write access to vehicles; a viewer or an external accountant cannot commit an import.

The one column you must have

rego. Everything else is optional. The importer also accepts registration, plate or numberplate as the header for the same thing, so an export from another system usually works untouched.

Other headers it recognises without renaming include vin or chassis, make or manufacturer, model, year, colour, fuel, transmission, current KM, owner name, email and phone, and the rego columns: rego_expiry, rego_expiry_date, rego_expires, rego_due, rego_renewal, registration_expiry, plus state or rego_state.

How to run it

1. Upload the CSV file, or paste the rows straight into the box.
2. Choose Preview. Nothing is written yet.
3. Read the preview. It shows how many rows will be created, how many will be skipped, and the reason for every rejected row.
4. If it looks right, commit the import.

The two-step is the whole point. A bad column mapping is obvious in the preview and expensive after a commit.

What gets rejected, and why

• Missing rego. The row has no plate, so there is nothing to key the vehicle on.
• Rego too long. More than 10 characters is not a plate; it is usually a merged cell or a VIN in the wrong column.
• Bad VIN length. A VIN outside 11 to 17 characters is refused rather than stored wrong.
• Unreadable date. Fix the date format in your spreadsheet and re-run.

Rejected rows do not stop the rest of the file. Fix them in the spreadsheet and import just those rows again.

After the import

• Set rego dates on anything that came in without one, so those cars join the reminder list. See rego renewal reminders.
• Check the Never serviced filter on the vehicles list. Imported cars with no service history land there, and that filter is a good first call list.
• Link owners where the import could not match a contact.

Doing it twice

Re-importing the same file will create the vehicles again. If you need a second pass, cut the file down to the rows that failed rather than re-running the whole thing.