Import your existing contacts and companies

Most teams arrive with a spreadsheet, or several. Importing is how you turn those into records that carry history, ownership and activity rather than sitting in a file nobody opens.

The important part is not the upload. It is the column mapping and what happens when a row matches something you already have.

Who this is for

Admins and ops people setting up a workspace, or anyone bringing a list back from an event.

Before you start

• A CSV file. Export from your current tool or save your spreadsheet as CSV.
• A quick look at your own columns first — knowing which column is the email address makes mapping much faster.
• Permission to import contacts or companies in your workspace.

Duplicates are matched, not doubled
Importing a list that overlaps with records you already hold does not create a second copy of everyone. Rows are matched against existing records, which is what makes it safe to re-import an updated export rather than having to diff it by hand first.

Import a list

1. Export your data as CSV
   One file per record type is easiest — contacts in one, companies in another. Keep the header row; it is what the mapping step reads.
2. Start an import and upload the file
   Choose whether you are importing contacts or companies, then upload. The file is read and you are shown what it found before anything is written.
3. Map your columns to fields
   Match each column in your file to a field in KudosCRM. You only have to do this once per file shape — the email address is the column that matters most, because it is what duplicate matching leans on.
4. Review before committing
   Check the preview. This is where a mis-mapped column is obvious and cheap to fix, and where it is expensive to skip.
5. Run the import
   Commit it. You get a per-row result, so rows that could not be imported are named rather than silently dropped.
6. Tidy up with bulk actions
   Once the records are in, use a filter plus bulk actions to tag, assign or update everything the filter returns, instead of editing record by record.

What you get

• Your existing people and organisations as real records, ready to own, filter and work.
• No duplicate explosion from importing a list that overlaps what you already had.
• A per-row account of what happened, including what did not import and why.
• A base you can immediately segment with saved views and bulk actions.

Frequently asked questions

Will importing create duplicates of contacts I already have?

Rows are matched against existing records rather than blindly appended, so an overlapping list does not double your data. Getting the email column mapped correctly is what makes that matching work well.

Can I import contacts and companies at the same time?

It is simplest to import them as separate files — one for contacts, one for companies — so each has its own clean column mapping.

What happens to rows with errors?

You get a per-row report rather than a silent partial success, so you can see exactly which rows did not import and fix just those.

I am coming from Pipedrive — should I still use CSV?

No. There is a dedicated Pipedrive migration that pulls your data across directly, which preserves more than a spreadsheet export can. Use CSV for lists that are not coming from Pipedrive.