Customer Import Birthday Format

toptrails · ‎01-16-2018

I'm trying to import my customers from another CRM system and am having trouble with the "Birthday" field. I'm importing from a .csv file, and all of the other fields are coming into the Square CRM system correctly.

The first time I tired my import, the field was formatted as m/d/yy, but everything was imported as 20xx. So if a customer's birthday year was 1955 it imported as 2055.

I reimported as m/d/yyyy, but now the birthday field did not import at all.

I figured I'd ask if there's a specified date format that needs to be used here before I kept running through the various formats.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

toptrails · ‎01-16-2018

UPDATE: Tried to re-import the .csv file, and now the birthdays are importing correctly, but I have custom fields that are importing incorrectly. Seems like the data is just jumbled between records - some customers are showing data that belongs to other customers in my custom fields.

Tried a few more times importing adjusted files and then tried re-importing the same file, and sometimes the birthdays correct and my custom fields are not and sometimes it's the opposite - custom fields are all good and birthdays import as: 1955 -> 2055.

I've been getting these different results using the exact same file in my last two imports. No adjustments.

I'm a little worried about the inconsistency because I'm hoping to set up a monthly workflow for this operation but don't want to spend half a day checking for accuracy each time.

My record set is quite large at roughly 10-11k rows of data.... maybe there is a time-out issue on import?

toptrails · ‎01-17-2018

UPDATE 2: I was able to get all of my customers to import with the correct birthdays, but NOT the correct data in the custom fields.

It seemed to be an Excel issue that was truncating the values of the year in the date on "save and exit". I solved this by saving my spreadsheet and then choosing NOT to save on exit. That made the birthdays import correctly into the customer directory.

BUT

Now I still have the problem with my custom field data not going where it belongs. All of the custom field data is attached to the wrong customers. The fields themselves seem to be intact (3 fields in total, all of the data seemed matched in just those fields but associated with the wrong customers).

I would really like to know how to get that data into the customer directory, as it was collected over 2 years of business operations and starting over from scratch would not be fun.

Tom · ‎01-17-2018

Hi @toptrails, welcome to the seller community and thank you for taking the time to troubleshoot this issue. Sorry to hear about the time it took to get it sorted out, though I'm glad to hear that you were able to get the birthdays to import correctly.

As for the custom field data, that shouldn't be happening—the data should remain with the correct customer. If you're still encountering this issue, I would suggest getting in touch with our Support Team and providing an example of a customer profile that's not importing correctly. They'll be able to take a closer look behind the scenes—for privacy purposes, we want to be careful to not share personal contact information in our online forums.

Hope this helps clear things up. If you have any other questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reply here and I'll be happy to take another look.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
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