Typing four hundred restaurants into a web form is not a plan. Import takes three kinds of file — stores, people, or one file carrying both — and all go through the same two-step: validate and preview, then commit.
- Choose stores, people, or stores + people together, and paste or upload the file.
- Read the preview. It shows exactly what will be created, what will be updated, and every row it could not understand — with the reason.
- Fix anything you want to fix and re-validate. Nothing has been written yet.
- Commit. Now it's written.
Column headings are matched flexibly — the usual variations on store number, name, address, region and market are recognized, so an export from your existing system generally works unedited. The preview tells you what it matched.
For people, each row is a name, an email or mobile, a role and a territory. A role name the organization doesn't have yet is not an error: the preview lists each unknown role with a choice — create it, or skip its rows. A role created this way starts with no management permissions and the default alerting posture (Danger only, at the person's own stores) until you tune it under Roles. Imported people receive alerts immediately and pick up their access when they first sign in.
In the combined file, a person with no territory columns is scoped to the store on their own row — the natural shape of a rollout sheet, one row per person with their store beside them. Store-only and person-only rows are fine in the same file.
The preview also offers to invite everyone imported with an email address, ticked by default — untick individuals, or the whole list in one click. Alerts never wait for an invitation; an invitation only lets a person sign in and see the dashboard, arriving with their role and territory already attached. Invitations that fail to send are reported, and re-sending from the Invitations page is always safe.
| File | Available on | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Stores | Pro and Enterprise | Getting twenty restaurants in shouldn't mean typing twenty forms. Store contacts — a name, email and phone per store — are columns in this file, so a small operator can set up alerting entirely from a spreadsheet. |
| People | Plans with roles and territories | Every row needs a role and a territory to land in. On a plan with a single user there is nowhere to put them, so the option isn't offered rather than accepting a file that could only fail. |
| Stores + people together | Plans with roles and territories | One file, one pass: stores are created first, then the people on the same rows, scoped to those stores. The shape a rollout spreadsheet already has. |
The preview also checks the file against your plan's site limit, so a spreadsheet with more stores than your plan holds is caught before you commit rather than at the last button. If that happens, deactivating stores you've closed frees their places and keeps their history.
Read next: Adding people →Read next: Plans and what each one includes →