Importing Inventory and Vendor Data

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The Import function can be found on through: File | Import | Import Inventory/Vendor data. You must have Administrator access to use this function.

IMPORTANT: Importing cannot be undone -- make sure you have a backup before doing the import, so you don't have to manually delete data if a mistake is made!

There are two primary requirements for the data to be imported:

1. It must be in either a comma-separated-value (CSV) or tab-delimited (text) format. If it's a CSV format, make sure that any fields with commas are enclosed in quotes (this is the standard).

2. The fields must be in a form that equates to the fields in Campground Master. For instance, the Contact name for vendor information must be a combined first/last name, City/State/Zip must be separated, Inventory Item Classes must match the classes you've defined in the pick lists, Taxes to be applied must be as a yes/no or true/false field for each tax rate, etc.


Importing Vendors vs. Inventory

Keep in mind that vendors and inventory items are separate records in Campground Master. Inventory Items are "linked" to vendors, but the vendor data is in a separate table.

You can import just the vendor data from a vendor list, or you can import the vendors along with inventory items at the same time if your import file contains the necessary information. You will see when defining the import fields (below) that there are two sets of fields -- one for Vendors and one for Inventory Items. If you're importing just the vendor data, then you will only select fields for vendors. If the import data has inventory information, then you can also import the inventory items by selecting those fields. If you have two separate lists, one with vendors and one with inventory, import the vendors first. Then import the inventory, and if the inventory information has a vendor's company name as one of the fields then it can be properly linked to the vendors already imported.


Importing Vendors from QuickBooks

You can import a vendor database from QuickBooks accounting software using this same Import function. First you need to export the data from QuickBooks using its Export function. In QuickBooks, select from the menu: File -> Utilities -> Export... an Export dialog will open where you select the lists to be exported. Export the Vendor list only.

Then click OK and enter a file name to export to, such as "Vendors.txt". This will be a tab-delimited file that can be used for importing below, and will have appropriate address/city/state/zip information if you entered this data uniformly into QuickBooks. Note that the exported table may also have some extra information in front, like "CUSTDICT" records. Just select those and delete them before importing the vendor data.


Importing Inventory from QuickBooks

You can also import inventory from QuickBooks if you have it set up as "Items". First you need to export the data from QuickBooks using its Export function. In QuickBooks, select from the menu: File -> Utilities -> Export... an Export dialog will open where you select the lists to be exported. Export the Item list only.

Then click OK and enter a file name to export to, such as "Items.txt". This will be a tab-delimited file that can be used for importing below, and will have item information. Note that the exported table may also have some extra information in front, like "CUSTITEMDICT" records. Just select those and delete them before importing the vendor data.


The Import Process

There are several easy steps to importing.

1. Select a file. You can enter the entire path to the import file, or use the Browse button. When browsing, it will look for .csv and .txt files by default, but you can change the file type to show all files if needed. For instance, QuickBooks exports files with the ".iif" extension, so you need to select All Files to see those.

2. Select the file format. Select either comma-separated or tab-delimited. Don't worry if you get it wrong -- the data will obviously look wrong when you import it if you choose the wrong type, and you can simply change this selection and do the Load Import File again.

3. Load the file for preview. Click the Load Import File button to read the data. The data is not actually added to your database yet, it's just loaded in the list on the dialog for previewing and editing.

4. Define fields to import. If the file loaded successfully you should see the data in nice columns in the table. If the import file had headers in it, you'll even see the headers in the first line, like "first name", "last name", "city", etc. Now comes the important part -- you have to decide what each column means, in terms of Campground Master fields. This is usually pretty easy to do. Just right-click on each field (either the header or the actual data), and then select the field that corresponds to that column. Customer, Reservation and Transaction fields are listed separately, and there is also a separate list for Site Preferences (primarily used for preferences that might affect the charges, like 50A service). The column header will then change to that name so you know you've defined it. You don't have to assign fields to each column -- just skip any that you don't need or don't have corresponding fields. If you make a mistake, use the Remove function on the right-click menu. See the notes below for more details.

5. Select vendor fields to use for duplicate-removal besides the company. When vendor data is imported, duplicate vendors will be automatically removed if possible. This not only applies to data you're importing, but also to any vendors already in your database (it won't remove duplicates from your database, but it will avoid importing new duplicates.) This requires at least a Company name field (the data isn't much use without that anyway). You can also choose to check the Zip code field and/or the Address line 1 fields, to avoid filtering out duplicate vendor names unless they have the same address. If you uncheck these fields, or if they're not available in the imported data, then it will assume any that match first and last names are duplicates. Note however that this is only offered as a convenience when importing. Once the vendors are imported, you should make sure that there are no duplicate company names in the database. See the section on Vendors for details.

6. Convert vendor names/addresses to mixed case or upper case. Other programs may force or suggest that vendor information be all upper case, which is easier to enter but is not as professional looking on orders. So you may want to decide to start entering the information in mixed-case, and you can also have the import function convert the old information. Conversely, you can make sure that all of the old information is in upper case if you wish to keep with that procedure. Note that this only affects the data during this session, not data already entered or previously imported into Campground Master.

7. Edit data if needed. The preview list is fully editable, so you can delete any records that you don't want to import (like obvious duplicates or blank records), and you can even enter corrections as needed here before importing. Just click on a field in the grid to select it and then start typing to replace it, or click twice to edit the value without replacing it. Likewise, just click any field and click the Delete button to delete the entire row. (Ctrl-click and shift-click functions for multiple selection also works.) Note that it the import file included a header row, you should also delete that row.

8. Import the data. When everything looks right, click the Import Data! button to perform the import. You may see an error or warning prompt about duplicate filtering or field definitions if there seems to be something missing. As the data is imported, you will see customer/reservation totals and a duplicate total count up at the bottom.

When the import is complete, all records imported are removed form the list, but there may be some records left over in the list, with a message saying that some errors were detected. To see why a record was not imported, just hold the mouse over the record in the list -- an error message will be shown with the reason for the error. Errors are typically a result of records that don't have an Item code or Company name (required by Campground Master), or for Inventory Item Classes or Transaction Categories that weren't recognized, or fields that were not formatted properly. You can ignore them and close the dialog to skip importing those items, or you can manually edit the records and run the Import again, as many times as needed to get them all imported.

When all is finished, just Close the dialog -- the data is imported to the database and the reports will be refreshed if necessary.


Notes on Importing Data

Some fields can be selected more than once, and the data will be combined into the one field in Campground Master. For instance, any data that doesn't have a direct import field correlation can be imported to the Inventory or Vendor Notes field. Each imported field will be added to a new line in the Notes, so that information is transferred even if Campground Master doesn't have a specific field for it. Also, any number of columns can be assigned to Vendor Contact Names, and they will simply be combined into the single field.

The Add Tax fields (flags for whether each tax should be added) and the Inactive field are true/false fields. These must be one of the following: true, false, yes, no, T, F, Y, or N. (Upper or lower case does not matter). If it's blank, then it's assumed False. Note that the Add Tax fields are simply numbered 1 to 5. You will need to know which number applies to each of your tax categories -- see Maintenance / Park Setup / Taxes for this numbering.


Inventory Item Class and Transaction Category

Inventory Item Classes and Transaction Categories must be assigned to every inventory item in Campground Master. When importing, you must either select an import field for each of these, or assign a default class/category to every imported item (you will be prompted for this when you do the import). If the import file has no field that would correspond to these, then the default is the only possibility.

However if the imported data does have some kind of class and/or category information, then it would be a good idea to keep that. The difficult part is that an exact match must be found for the class and/or category in the corresponding pick list, or else it can't be imported. Since there are often a large number of classes given to items, it would b a lot of work to enter all of those manually into Campground Master. So here is a procedure which can help:

1.	Load the import data into this Import dialog.

2.	Locate the data column that appears to be the class information, and Copy/Paste that whole column into an Excel spreadsheet (or any spreadsheet program).

3.	Sort the column (if you didn't already to this before copying).

4.	Go through and delete any duplicates and an other unwanted information (like headers), and note how many there are.

5.	In Campground Master, close the Import dialog and open the appropriate Pick List, like Inventory Item Classes.

6.	Click New Record as many times as needed to add all of them.

7.	Copy the column of data from Excel, and Paste it into each of the first 3 columns in Campground Master (starting at the first pick list item, of course)

8.	Now go back to Import, and you can import the data. (Select the appropriate field for each column in the import list of course.)

Repeat steps 2 through 7 for both categories and classes, if needed. Note however that it would probably be better to just do the classes and let the categories default to a single value. See the section on Inventory Classes and Transaction Categories for more explanation of these fields.