Importing products from Excel

The Products screen can read an Excel or CSV file, which is by far the quickest way to get an existing catalogue into the till.

Get the template first

Do not build your own spreadsheet from scratch. On the Products screen, use the import option and download the supplied template. It has the exact column headings the importer expects, so nothing has to be guessed at either end.

Open the template, paste or type your products into it, and save it. Keep the header row exactly as it came.

Preparing the data

A few things are worth sorting out in the spreadsheet, where fixing them is a drag-down rather than a hundred clicks:

• Categories should be spelled identically everywhere. Drinks and drinks with a trailing space are two different categories as far as the importer is concerned.
• Barcodes should be formatted as text, not numbers. Excel will happily turn a 13-digit barcode into scientific notation and drop the last digits.
• Prices should be plain numbers with no currency symbol.
• Costs are worth filling in even if it is tedious, because the stock valuation report is useless without them.

Running the import

Choose the file and let it run. When it finishes you get a results report rather than a silent success.

Read it. It tells you how many rows were imported, how many were skipped and why. The usual reasons for a skipped row are a missing name, a price that is not a number, or a duplicate barcode already on another product.

Fix those rows in the spreadsheet and import again. Rows that imported cleanly the first time are not the problem, so it is usually quickest to cut the failures into a small second file and import just those.

Check it before you open

After a large import, spend five minutes checking:

• Open the Visual checkout layout and confirm the categories look the way you expect.
• Scan a handful of real products off the shelf and make sure each finds the right item at the right price.
• Look at Stock to see whether quantities landed where you intended.

Exporting

The same screen exports your catalogue back out to a spreadsheet. That is useful for a price review, for handing a list to your accountant, or for copying a catalogue to a second till — export from one, import into the other.

Remember that there is no live sync between tills. An export and import is a snapshot, not a link, so a price change on one machine does not reach the other on its own.