Client bulk import

Import many clients at once from a spreadsheet. A short assistant walks you through four steps: pick a file, line up your columns, review, and watch the import run.

Where to find it

Clients list → Bulk Import button

Who can use it

Team members who can create clients

Direct URL

https://app.nextal.com/clients/bulk-import

🔒Requires permission:Client Create

Bulk import is the fastest way to bring a list of client companies into Nextal — typically when you’re onboarding a portfolio from another tool or seeding your account at the start. You open the assistant, drop in a spreadsheet, tell Nextal which column means what, and the assistant creates the clients one by one.

Screenshot pendingThe Bulk Client Import assistant showing four steps across the top: Upload, Map columns, Configure, Import. The first step is open with a file drop zone in the middle.

The Bulk Import assistant. The four steps are always visible across the top so you know where you are.

At a glance — the four steps

Step

Name

What happens

1

Upload

Drop in a spreadsheet — CSV or Excel, up to 10 MB. Download the template right from this step if you need a starting point.

2

Map columns

Tell Nextal which column matches which client field. The assistant guesses for you on common names — review and adjust.

3

Configure

Preview your data, choose whether to skip duplicates, optionally pick tags to attach to every imported client.

4

Import

Watch the progress bar. When at least one client imports successfully, you’re sent back to the clients list with a success notification.

Opening the assistant

1. Go to your clients list

   Click Clients in the main menu.

2. Click Bulk Import

   The button is on the list toolbar. The assistant opens on its own page.

Step 1 — Upload your spreadsheet

Screenshot pendingThe upload step with a drop zone in the middle, a short list of file requirements above it, and a "Download template" link below.

Drop your file in the middle, or click to browse. The template link sits below the drop zone.

What file types work:

• CSV (.csv)
• Excel (.xlsx or .xls)

Size limit: 10 MB. Bigger files are rejected with “File is too large. Maximum size is 10MB.” Split into two imports.

Need a template? Click the Download template link near the drop zone. You’ll get a CSV with the right column headers — fill it in and re-upload.

Step 2 — Tell Nextal what your columns mean

Screenshot pendingThe column mapping step with one row per spreadsheet column. Each row has the spreadsheet header on the left, a dropdown of client fields in the middle, and a sample value on the right.

One row per column in your spreadsheet. Pick the matching client field from the dropdown.

The only required field

Just one field is required for clients:

• Company Name — must be filled in. Company names must be unique across the whole organisation.

Until Company Name is mapped, the Next button stays disabled.

What else you can import

40+ fields, grouped by category:

Category

Fields

Required

Company Name

Basic info

Industry, Website, Description, Address, Phone, Fax, Email

Structured address

Street Address, City, Province/State, Postal Code, Country, Latitude, Longitude

Management

Client Manager ID, Account Manager ID, Sales Rep ID, Status, Rating, Priority

Business details

Number of Employees, Annual Revenue, Founded Year, Tax ID, DUNS Number

Organisation arrays

Locations, Departments, Segments, Tags, Services, Products (comma-separated)

Social media

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, YouTube

Additional

Source, Referred By, Account Type, Payment Terms, Credit Limit, Notes

Small clean-ups Nextal does for you

Before each client is created, the assistant tidies up the data:

• Company name is trimmed of leading/trailing whitespace.
• Email is lowercased and trimmed.
• Phone and fax keep only digits, plus signs, dashes, parentheses and spaces — random characters are stripped.
• Website URL — if you forgot the https://, Nextal adds it for you.
• Social media URLs — if you typed just a username (e.g. “acmecorp”), Nextal expands it to the full URL of the right platform (“https://linkedin.com/company/acmecorp”).
• Numeric fields (Status, Rating, Number of Employees, Annual Revenue, Founded Year, Credit Limit) are parsed as numbers — text like “twenty” imports as blank.
• Status defaults to 1 (Active) if not provided.
• Locations / Departments / Segments are auto-created if they don’t already exist in your organisation.

Step 3 — Configure your import

Screenshot pendingThe configure step with a data preview at the top and a configuration card below.

Preview at the top, options below. The blue Tips box gives you the four rules to know.

Preview your data

The first ten rows of your file are shown with all your mapping rules applied. Last chance to catch a wrong mapping before you run the import.

Skip duplicates checkbox

Two clients in Nextal can’t share the same company name. The checkbox tells the assistant what to do when it finds a duplicate:

• On (default) — duplicates are silently skipped and counted as success. Use this when re-running an import after a failure.
• Off — duplicates are reported as errors. Use this for a strict reconciliation report.

Add tags to every imported client

Pick or type tags in the multi-select. Every client in this import will get those tags, in addition to any from your spreadsheet’s Tags column.

Tips box

A blue Tips box appears at the bottom of Step 3 with four important rules:

• Company names must be unique across the system
• Locations, departments and segments are auto-created if they don’t exist yet
• Status field: 1 = Active, 0 = Inactive (defaults to Active if blank)
• Social media fields accept full URLs or just usernames/handles

Step 4 — Run the import

Screenshot pendingThe import step with a horizontal progress bar, three counters (Processed, Successful, Failed), and a list of error messages as they appear.

The progress bar fills as each client is created. Errors appear in a list below the counters.

Click Start Import. For each row in your file:

1. Nextal applies the column mapping
2. Runs the clean-ups above
3. Validates: company name not empty, email format if provided, website is a valid URL if provided, numbers are not negative, founded year is between 1800 and current year
4. Creates the client
5. Adds your tags as a follow-up step
6. Pauses briefly, then moves to the next row

Three counters update in real time: Processed, Successful, Failed. Errors are listed below with the row number and a short message.

When the import finishes

If at least one client imported successfully, you’ll see a notification (“Successfully imported N clients”) and after a couple of seconds you’re sent back to the clients list. Your new entries are right there.

If everything fails

No notification, no redirect. You stay on the import step with the error list visible. Read the errors, fix your file, then start over from Step 1.

Who can do what

What you want to do

What you need

Open the Bulk Import page

Permission to create clients

Upload, map, configure, run the import

Same

Tips

• Test with a few rows first. Trim your file to 3-4 rows, run the import, check the result. If the mapping was wrong, fixing 4 records is faster than 400.
• Use the same canonical naming. Company names need to be unique. If you import “Acme Corp” today and “ACME Corp” next month, you’ll end up with duplicates that confuse reports.
• Skip the structured-address fields for first runs. If you have street/city/province/country/postal code as separate columns, they import fine — but if you only have a single Address field, that works too. Don’t worry about geocoding; the structured address gets used as-is.
• Locations, departments and segments seed automatically. If your spreadsheet has “Engineering, Sales, Marketing” in a Departments column, those three values are auto-created in your organisation’s department list — no need to pre-configure them.