In Service Suite you can easily import your customers from other systems. Most ERP systems provide functions for exporting customers in comma-separated files, which then can be imported in Service Suite.

As most ERP systems exports data in their own fixed format, the first thing to do is to export the customers in your ERP system to a text file.

When this is done you use Service Suite to define a format that contains information's about which fields this file contains, as well as the position of the individual fields.

 Defining a format for importing customers.

You define a format for importing customers by selecting the menu: "Settings" from the "Main menu" in Service Suite.

The menu now changes and reveals a number of new menus. From this new menu you select the menu: "ERP-system", which displays the following screen:

First you should select which folder to use for data exchange between you ERP system and Service Suite. In most cases a new folder should be created for this purpose. By pressing the button: "Change folder", you can select the folder to use:

Now the exchange folder has been selected you can define the format for importing customers. This is done by clicking the link: "Change format" besides the customer ledger, which will launch this dialog:

In order to create a new format you press the button: "Create new format" which results in this dialog:

In this dialog you must enter a name and description for this format. You also have to enter the name of the file that you normally will import your customers from. Only the filename itself should be supplier as the path to the file was determined when you selected the exchange folder.

As many ERP systems have limited export capabilities, you must also select whether the character set used should be ANSI or ASCII. If in doubt, try selecting ANSI, and should your local characters be incorrectly displayed, change the format to ASCII.

Which type of file to select depends on your ERP system, but normally comma-separated files are used.

When these information's has been filled in, you press the button: "Next >", which shows the next step:

This is where you define which fields that are contained in your text file, as well as the position of the fields. For fields that are not included in the text file, or fields that you do not wish to be imported, you should enter 0 in the position column besides the field.

The position column is used to specify the position of each field in the text file, in order to match the text file exported from your ERP system. If your text file e.g. contains the customer number in position 1, and the name of the contact person in position 2 you should enter "1" in the position field besides the customer number,  "2" in the field besides the contact and so on.

Another possibility is to import 'Fixed values'. If your text file e.g. does not contain a country field, but you wish that all your customers should be imported with the value "United States" in this field you can enter "0" in the position column besides the country field, and "United States" in the "Fixed value" field. This will assign the value of "United States" to the customer field of all imported customers.

When the format has been defined you press the button: "Finish", which will close the wizard and return to the previous dialog, in which you press the button: "OK". Now you are ready to import your customers.

 Import customers.

Now you can import your customers from the customer ledger. You can navigate back to the customers by selecting the menu: "Main" and then selecting the menu: "Customers".

On this screen you select the menu: "Import customers", which will launch this dialog:

In this dialog you select the text file that contains the customers to import, as well as the format you have just created, and press the button: "OK".

Now all you need to do is to wait for the import to finish. When the customers have been imported you press the button: "Finish"

The configuration of the import format only has to be done the first time as Service Suite remembers this format for future use.

Besides this manual import of customers, Service Suite has the capability of automatically importing customers. If you are interested you can read more about how to automate the import of customers.

Should you have any questions or queries regarding how to import customers into Service Suite, you are always welcome to contact us at: servicesuite@mamut.com