Data import from Insightly

Hi @Stan Shaw, thanks for posting! It sounds like there are three core piece you’re looking to move over:

1. Companies
2. Contacts (called People in Copper)
3. Note associated with those Companies and Contacts

I’ll give you the general steps for bringing those into Copper. Let me know if you have any questions. We also run a weekly Q&A where you can get some live help.

Step 1: Export your Companies, Contacts, and Notes from Insightly

They have instructions on how to do that here.

I recommend you keep a raw version of this data and also a working copy where you’ve deleted any columns you won’t export into Copper. This is also a good time to look at your data more closely, fill in any gaps, delete unnecessary rows, etc.

Step 2: Check your custom fields in Copper

This is just making sure each column you’re importing has a place to land in Copper. To see which fields you already have, go to Settings > Customize > Manage Fields on Records > Companies or People. Cross-reference the fields you have listed there with what you’re importing. If something is missing, create that field by clicking Create Field.

Step 3: Import Companies and then Contacts/People into Copper

In Copper, go to Settings > Manage Your Data > Import Data > Import Companies. Upload your file. The system will ingest the data and give you a view like this:

This is where you indicate which spreadsheet column matches with which field. The system will try to match it by name. You can make any adjustments using the dropdown at the top of each column.

Click “Continue Import” when you’re ready. You’ll be prompted to customize your import tag, and then it’ll bring you back to the import page with a progress bar.

Once you’ve imported Companies, repeat the steps for Contacts/People. In your Contacts/People import file, make sure there is a column for which Company they belong to, and make sure the spelling/format matches exactly with the Company name you have in Copper.

Step 4: Import Notes

Something to consider is whether you need to import these as actual Notes or if it can go in the Description of a Company/Person.

• If it’s a general descriptor, is not time-stamped and you don’t need to know which user logged it, I recommend you import this into the Description field of your Companies/People. To do this you would just include it as a column in your import sheets.
• If it’s time-stamped, you need to know which user did it, or if you have multiple of them per Company/People, then you should import these as Notes - see below.

This is a bit of different process since we have to attach Notes to their appropriate record (Company or Person). To do this, follow these instructions for importing Activities (our system treats Notes like a kind of Activity).

Let me know if that helps!

@Stan Shaw yup - here’s the link on how to import Activities!

We do have a tool for importing Projects. Once you have your Projects created you can import the Activities/Notes into them using the same method as above.

That being said, have you played around with our Projects tool? Some folks actually prefer to create a Pipeline for keeping track of things rather than using our built-in Projects feature. Our Projects feature is great for tracking Tasks. But Pipelines give you better visibility for the overall status (i.e. what stages they’re in). If you haven’t already, I recommend playing around with both to see which fits your use case better.