Moving to GoodBooks from a church management program, a donor database, or a treasurer's spreadsheet? You can bring the whole contact list over in one upload instead of typing it in. The importer reads a CSV or Excel file, skips anyone already in GoodBooks, and tells you exactly which rows it couldn't use and why.
Where: left menu Contacts, then the Import button. Requires contact editing permission.
Preparing the file
Click Download Template on the import page for a CSV with the right header row, or use your own export. Column order doesn't matter, and common variations of the headings are recognized ("Company" for Organization Name, "E-mail", "Street", "Zip Code", "Cell", and so on).
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| First Name / Last Name | For people. |
| Organization Name | For businesses, foundations, churches. A row needs at least a first name, a last name, or an organization name. |
| Payee Name | Optional. Left blank, GoodBooks uses the organization name, or "First Last" for a person. |
| Becomes the contact's primary email. An invalid address doesn't block the row; the contact imports without it and you get a note. | |
| Phone | Becomes the primary phone. |
| Address 1 / Address 2 / City / State / Zip | State takes a two-letter code or the full name ("Minnesota"). |
| Donor | Yes or No (default No). Yes marks the contact as a donor, which is what counts toward your plan's donor-record limit. |
| Envelope Number | Core plan and up, see Using Giving Envelope Numbers. Ignored on plans without envelopes. |
A row with an organization name and no first/last name imports as an organization; anything with a person's name imports as an individual, the same rule the contact form uses.
Running the import
Upload the file and click Import Contacts. The results page shows how many contacts were imported and how many rows were skipped, followed by a note for every row that needed attention, numbered by the row in your spreadsheet so you can find it.
Duplicates are skipped, not doubled. A row whose name matches an existing contact ("First Last" for people, the organization name for organizations) is skipped, and so is a second row with the same name later in the same file. That makes re-running an import safe: fix the rows that had problems, upload the same file again, and only the new ones go in.
Good to know
- Envelope conflicts don't lose the contact. If a row's envelope number is already assigned to someone else (or appears twice in the file), the contact imports without an envelope and the note says so. Assign numbers afterward with the bulk envelope manager.
- Plan limits apply to donors only. Rows marked Donor = Yes stop when your plan's donor-record limit is reached ("Plan limit reached — the last N rows were not imported"); rows marked No keep importing.
- The importer creates contacts and their primary email and phone. Giving history, pledges, and memberships aren't imported; record gifts through Batch Gift Entry or enter opening balances the way the getting-started guide describes.
- Large files are fine. The upload goes straight to secure storage, so the size of the spreadsheet isn't a problem.
- Your chart of accounts has its own importer, described in Managing Your Chart of Accounts.
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