This post is a bit off topic, but someone asked about it recently so I thought I’d cover it here.
Maybe you get orders in to your eCommerce site, but before importing them you need to create the customers.
Let’s assume that you are auto numbering your Customer IDs so the Auto Number checkbox is checked on the Segmented Keys (CS202000) screen in Acumatica like this:
Let’s also assume that you are using the customer’s email address as the unique identifier for the customer. This wouldn’t work very well in a business to business situation because every person at a company would get a new customer created when they should probably all be contacts under the same customer. But this should work fine in more of a retail situation where each unique email address is assumed to be a completely separate customer.
I made a really simple Excel import spreadsheet to demonstrate this concept:
Then I attached the spreadsheet to a Data Provider in the Data Providers (SM206015) screen and then created an import scenario in the Import Scenarios (SM206025) screen that utilizes the Data Provider.
My Import Scenario looks like this:
This is a very simple example, but hopefully it illustrates the point.
A few things to note about the screenshot above:
- The second row is what tells it to lookup by email. Notice that I’m not feeding it Customer ID anywhere because the Customer ID will automatically get created by auto numbering.
- When this import scenario runs, it will update the customer if it finds one with a matching email. If it does not find a matching email, then it will create a new customer with the Customer Name and Email from the import file (lines 3 and 4 above). You can add additional fields to the import so it will update/create those fields as well.
So that’s it, pretty simple.
Ignoring Existing Customers
The method above will create new customers based on the email address, but it will also update customer information if it finds an email match.
If you don’t want the import to update any information on the customer if it finds an email match, then you can use the Target Restrictions tab and put the following:
This will ensure that no customer information is updated when it finds an existing customer with the same email address.
But there is a trick to get this to work when you actually run the import scenario.
If you are doing a one-time import using the Import by Scenario (SM206036) screen, then you have to uncheck the Break on Incorrect Target checkbox on the Details tab. If you don’t do this, then the import will stop running after it encounters the first customer email address that already exists in Acumatica.
If you are scheduling the import to run automatically in the Automation Schedules (SM205020) screen, then you need to do the same thing (uncheck the Break on Incorrect Target checkbox) on the Filter Values tab.
