Import Contacts , how to link with Accounts ?

SuiteCRM Forum - English Language SuiteCRM General Discussion
1

I have imported Accounts.

Now I have to import CONTACTS, and I need ofcourse RELATE the contacts to the appropiate Accounts. (Account Name field)

In Contacts I have field CompanyC,(as a backup field for Account Name) but should I create in the Contacts also “Account Name” to get the relation to the Contacts ?

Example:

Company Name (firstname lastname)

Johnson Max Reefer
Johnson Eric Nols
Mattis Co John Wood
KeelerCo Nathalia Jog

2

Hi,

It is simple. If you attach the Contacts with the Accounts by NAME values, then there is an issue (detail is long). All the data will not be joined properly.
The ideal thing is to add ACCOUNT ID column in the Contacts records files, and then put Account ID there and then import these records in the CRM.

Hope you will get what i am saying.

Thanks

1 Like
3

Hi @suitecrm_developer,

I have imported accounts and after that the contacts. I had added a custom field “accouID” in both datasets (account and contacts) in order to have ability to join and update them perhaps manually in the Suite CRM database. Now I see, that there is another table called accounts_contacts, which is maintained by the system with it’s generated IDs

Is there any chance / best practice to update the (already imported) contacts and link them to the accounts?

Cheers,
Matthias

4

If it was me, I would export all the contacts to excel spreadsheet, export all the account to excel spreadsheet. Then match the contacts to the account ID you get from account export. If you already have account names that match, what I would do is use vlookup in excel to match the contacts to the Accounts. Once you have the account id for each record then re-upload the contacts with the proper account id. This will make all the relationships.

This is how I normally do it when importing from another CRM. Import accounts first, get the account ID’s match them to the contacts, then upload the contacts with proper account ID relation.

2 Likes
5

Thanks @pstevens for this great tipp! Will check it out and keep you posted : )

P.S.: As (unfortunately) I have already imported all accounts and all contacts already, I have to do it in a slightly different way, but got your approach re vlookup and stuff.

6

You can still export all your contacts and accounts the way I suggest and then re-upload the contacts with the proper account ID this will update the records and make all the proper associations.