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

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

Go to your clients list

In the top menu, click Clients.
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 Sample 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 Sample Template link near the drop zone. You get a CSV whose header lists the 41 columns the assistant recognises — in the order of the list below — with two sample rows. The CRM-module columns are always in it; without the module they simply stay unmapped at Step 2 and are ignored.

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

Every field below is really saved on the client profile.

For every organisation (28 fields):

Category	Fields (as displayed)
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, Status (1 = Active, 0 = Inactive)
Organisation lists	Locations, Departments, Segments, Tags — comma-separated
Social media	LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, YouTube
Comment	Notes (added as a comment) — see below

With the CRM module (13 more fields) — available with the CRM module (contact Nextal to enable it); without it, these fields are not in the list:

Category	Fields (as displayed)
Management	Account Manager ID, Sales Rep ID, Rating (1-5), Priority (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH)
Business details	Number of Employees, Annual Revenue, Founded Year, Tax ID, DUNS Number
Organisation lists	Services — comma-separated
Additional	Source, Referred By, Account Type

These fields then show in the header and the Profile tab of the client profile.

The Notes column becomes a comment

Notes is not a profile field: its content is added as a comment (a note) on the client right after it is created, and shows in the Comments tab. Each line of the cell becomes a paragraph. You are its author.

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”, “https://facebook.com/acmecorp”, etc.).
Status defaults to 1 (Active) if not provided.
Latitude and longitude are stored together as the client’s coordinates, only when both are filled in.
Lists (Locations, Departments, Segments, Tags, Services) are split on commas, trimmed and de-duplicated. Locations, departments, segments and tags are auto-created in your organisation’s lists if they don’t already exist.
Rating — a number from 1 to 5; a decimal is rounded, anything above 5 becomes 5, a 0 or text is ignored.
Priority — LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH in any casing; the French words faible, basse, moyenne, élevée, haute and the Spanish baja, media, alta are recognised too. Any other value is ignored.
Number of Employees and Founded Year — whole numbers; grouping spaces and commas (18 000, 1,200) are accepted.
Annual Revenue — an amount: $1,200,000, 1 200 000,50 $ or 18000000; the currency symbol is removed and the amount rounded to whole units.
A CRM value off its scale (a Rating of “five”, a Priority of “urgent”) is not an error: the client is created without that value.

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 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:

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
The Notes column is added as a comment on the created client
With the CRM module only: Rating is a number from 1 to 5 and Priority is LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH; other values are ignored

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:

Nextal applies the column mapping
Runs the clean-ups above
Validates: company name not empty, email format if provided, website is a valid URL if provided, number of employees and annual revenue not negative, founded year between 1800 and the current year
Creates the client, then applies the row’s status and client manager when they differ from the defaults (Active, yourself)
Saves the tags, locations, departments and segments — yours (Step 3) and the row’s
Adds the Notes column as a comment
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.
Import the phone and email. They show in the profile header and the list search finds them.
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.
A Notes column for the history. The context your previous tool kept as free text (“key relationship: Marie in HR”) lands in the Comments tab instead of getting lost in the description.