Firstly please make sure that you have your Custom Fields set up inside your CRM account 


Custom Fields can be set up inside Settings, Global Settings to enable you to collect and track data about your contacts in a variety of formats such as text fields, drop down menus, check lists, dates and row formats.   


Please click here to find out more about how to set up Custom Fields and the different formats you can use to collect information. 


Custom Fields that have not been set up inside Global Settings, when added via an import to your CRM system will be added as text fields.  So it is therefore important that you set up the custom fields inside Global Settings if you wish to track data in any other format other than text fields. 


Please note: Once your custom fields are set up with your chosen formats - if you have collected custom field data relating to those fields then you cannot change the format that custom field.  As once set up if you make any changes to the format of a custom field  - for instance change a drop down format to a text format this will affect your existing data that was recorded. 


You must instead create a new custom field with the new format that you want to use and contact our Help desk  if you want us to transfer data from the old custom field format over to the new custom field format.


Export Contacts 


Once your custom fields have been set up then the easiest way to populate custom field data with either new or updated information is to do an export of your contacts database. 


By doing an export of your contacts this will provide you with the correct column headings to use for either adding in new contacts or updating existing contacts and at the same time either adding/updating custom field data.


If you do an export of your contacts data please note that you will have a column heading at the beginning of the Excel sheet called 'ICUniqueID' it is is very important that you keep this column in place as this links your contacts on the spreadsheet directly back into their correct contact records inside your account.


Add/Amend Data 


New contacts can be added to the Excel file that has been created from the export - just simply add your contacts onto the spreadsheet, using the column headings to guide you, when you import the data these new contacts will be added along with the existing contacts. 


Remove any column headings from the Excel file that are not relevant to you, but DO NOT remove the ICUniqueID column as this is very important - without this your existing contacts will not update correctly!


Custom field headings will be shown towards the end of the Excel sheet - scroll across the sheet to view these - as shown below:



The custom fields shown above on the Excel sheet above are displayed inside your account in various formats as shown below:




How to populate data in row format on an Excel spreadsheet:


Please click here to see how to populate custom field row data on an Excel spreadsheet to correctly populate the data inside your account when imported. 


How to populate drop down options on an Excel spreadsheet:


So long as you enter one of the drop down options already set up for the relating custom field then the data will import into the correct custom field. 


For example the custom field 'How did they hear about us?' is a drop down format inside your account - as shown below:



Find on your Excel sheet the column heading 'How did they hear about us? and enter in one of the above drop down options - please make sure that you enter the text exactly as it is displayed inside the custom field as shown in the example below.




This will ensure that when your data is imported the correct drop down options will be entered for your custom field. 



How to populate Dates for importing correctly into custom fields?


Once your custom field is set up as a date format you will see inside a contact record that this custom field date has a date stamp - as shown below:



On the Excel sheet find the custom field column heading which matches this data custom field - for example the 'Date course running' custom field heading as shown below:



Please make sure that you add any dates in the following format:


20/04/2015


As shown in the example below:



When your data is imported these dates will then be inserted into the correct custom field as shown below:



How to populate checklist options for importing correctly?


A custom field set up as a checklist format will be displayed inside your account as shown below 'Services quote on':



Find on your Excel sheet the column heading 'Services quote on' and enter in one of the above checklist options - please make sure that you enter the text exactly as it is displayed inside the custom field as shown in the example below:



If you want to select more than one checklist option please put a comma (,) between each option but leave the last option without a comma.


When the data is imported the custom field checklist will automatically be populated with the checklist options as shown below:



How to populate text field information?


If you have set up your custom field as a text format then you can enter text into the custom field column heading that matches your custom field heading inside your account. 


Please see below an example of a custom field text format heading called 'More info?' inside the CRM account:



Please see below the custom field heading 'More info?' on the Excel sheet:





Here you can enter the text into each cell for the relevant contacts, when this text data is imported it will update your contacts as shown below:




If you have any questions about the above please contact our Support Helpdesk for assistance.