Importing data into Flowtrac is easy; just drag and drop your CSV of data. Whether you’re importing large quantities of products’ information, long lists of vendors and customers, or receive and pick orders, we have an import for it that saves you from having to key in the data by hand one by one.
However, depending on the state of your data prior to Flowtrac, the CSV you prepare for import might take you longer to arrange. We want to make sure your data is precisely correct before conducting the import. The system will do its best to catch an errors that might exist in your data before it accepts the import.
In the case that you receive an error message upon trying to import, rest assured you did not break anything. On the contrary, you have been prevented from importing possibly faulty data. When errors occur, or to prevent them from occurring in the first place, below are a some tips for how to conduct a successful import and what to do to fix common errors. The errors will explain how to fix them when they occur.
In no particular order, consider the following points:
- The import is Case sensitive. You will receive an error if, for example, in the column designated for “Type” of product on the product import is filled in with “inventory” instead of “Inventory”. Take not of the options to use for each column listed out in row 2 of them import’s template. As another example, if you filled in your “Track by” column with “lot” and/or “serial”, you will receive an error until you capitalize as reflected in the row 2 of the template, which would be “Lot” and/or “Serial”. Change and re-import.
- You cannot import duplicates. Sometimes, when organizations compile their data, such as product numbers and descriptions, into one spreadsheet, they could’ve inadvertently had the same item on their in two different places. One of the duplicates must be deleted. You can search for duplicates using your CSV functions in whichever spreadsheet app you’re using on your computer. Delete the duplicates and attempt to re-import.
- You cannot intersperse blank rows. Flowtrac will try to read the blank lines but find nothing to import. This is an easy fix. Simply delete and open lines within your CSV.
- Start your data in row 3. The first two lines of the import template are for instructions thus will not be imported into Flowtrac. Therefore, start your data in row 3. Data in row 1 and 2 will not be imported. Also, because these lines are still on your CSV, consider the difference of 2 rows in your CSV file from what is now in the importing errored grid.
- Keep barcodes short. If you are letting Flowtrac automatically generate the product barcodes column on the import, it will be duplicating the characters in your product name column. If these are long, you will want to cutoff some characters in the barcode column. For example, if your product name is “Flex Wire 1/2 red medium 2.0 granger”, this is fine for a product name and you are free to keep it this way, but this is a long barcode. Consider reducing it. However, this will not necessarily be considered an error on the import, but it’s a common mistake we wanted to include in the import troubleshooting section.