Import suppliers in bulk

Instead of entering every supplier individually, use the bulk import to create a whole supplier list at once from a CSV or Excel file. The application validates every record before it is imported, so faulty rows never reach your supplier overview unnoticed.

Prerequisites

• You are signed in to your team and have the administrator role.
• Your import file is a .csv, .xlsx or .xls file of no more than 10 MB with a maximum of 5,000 rows.
• The import page is currently not linked from a button. Open it from the address bar by appending /import to the address of your supplier overview. The breadcrumb path then reads “Dashboard > Supplier Data Collection > Supplier Data Collection > Bulk import”.

Download the template

The section “Download template” describes the expected file format. Use “Download Excel template” or “Download CSV template” to get a prepared file and enter your supplier data in the given columns.

• “Required fields”: supplier_name, contact_email, country, annual_spend, spend_category.
• “Optional fields”: contact_name, industry_nace, spend_currency, notes.
• “Country” expects an ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 country code (for example DE, AT, US), “NACE industry” a NACE code (for example C29.1) and “Spend currency” an ISO 4217 currency code – if you leave it empty, EUR is used.

Step by step

1. In the section “Upload file”, click “Import file” and select your completed file.
2. The file is validated immediately. Check the section “Validation results” for the number of “Valid rows”, “Errors” and “Warnings”.
3. If the file contains errors, correct them in your spreadsheet and select “Upload another file” to submit the corrected version.
4. Click “Import [number] valid rows” (for example “Import 1 valid rows”). Only the valid rows are imported.
5. After the message “Import completed successfully” appears, review the “Import summary” in the section “Import completed”, in particular the row “Created”; skipped rows are listed separately.
6. Use “Back to supplier index” to return to the supplier overview, or “Import more” to start the next import right away.

What happens next

• All imported suppliers appear in the supplier table with the status “Not engaged”.
• They are counted in the metrics and in the engagement pipeline.
• Imported records behave like manually created suppliers and can be edited afterwards or used for data requests.

Practical tip: start with a test import of just a few rows. This reveals format and mapping errors – especially with country codes and currencies – before you import the complete supplier list.