If you have an existing membership scheme and are moving to GoodCRM, this article explains how to import your current members and their membership information via the Data Import tool.
Important things to know
When you upload members to GoodCRM you are following the same process as uploading people (members are people after all!) – but with a few additional fields.
If you’re not familiar with uploading data to GoodCRM, read Using the Import Data tool first, this will explain important elements such as formatting data and creating tags or connections upon upload.
Preparing your membership data for upload
Prepare data about your members as you would prepare for uploading people (see Using the Import Data tool).
As well as data about your members, we’ll need you to include columns for the following data:
Membership Plan ID (required)
This is the numerical ID of the membership plan you wish to add this person onto. This is the most technical part of the process because you need to know the correct ID for the membership plan.
Please ensure you upload the numerical PLAN ID, not the name of the plan in this column on the spreadsheet.
You can find the Plan ID displayed on your membership plans in GoodCRM:
Membership Renewal Date (required)
This should be the date that the membership is next due for renewal. As with any dates imported to GoodCRM, this should follow the format: YYYY-MM-DD.
Membership Number (optional)
This is best left blank, members will receive new membership numbers. However, if it is important to maintain the existing numbers, enter these here, ensure they are unique and order the data by this column, ensuring the lowest numbers are at the top of the file and ascending.
Membership numbers can only include numbers, not letters.
Membership Status (optional)
One of: Active, Cancelled, Lapsed or Pending
If not specified, memberships will be assumed to be active initially.
Membership First Started (optional)
This should be the date that the membership began. As with any dates imported to GoodCRM, this should follow the format: YYYY-MM-DD.
As well as the fields above, you should include any other details you wish to store for the member (name, email, etc) – this all works as a standard import would.
Email is a required field for memberships and must be unique – if someone does not have an email address, use {firstname}.{lastname}@example.com
Example of a spreadsheet ready for upload:
Please note that your spreadsheet should be a .csv file.
If your software reformats your dates, please re-format them to YYYY-MM-DD format and save.
Reformatting happens when you next re-open the document, so it will be saved correctly, you can also turn automatic formatting off in your software to prevent this.
Uploading the data
If you’re not familiar with uploading data to GoodCRM, read Using the Import Data tool first, this will explain important elements such as formatting data and creating tags or connections upon upload.
Choose Memberships as the type of data you’re uploading in the Import Data tool.
Tick the Ignore duplicates (based on email address) option, unless you’re certain none of the members exist as people in the system already. This will skip over creating new people, but will still create all memberships.
Match up your additional membership fields to the relevant options in the Import Tool:
Follow the usual import steps and your new memberships will be created.