Importing Members

If you have your address information contained all in one column, it will need to be converted into multiple fields as listed below. Watch the video to learn how to do this in Excel.

• Address 1
• City
• State
• Zip
• Country

For the purposes of importing you can either use one column header titled “Account Name” that would contain the first name and last name merged together in one column, or you can use separate columns for “First Name” and “Last Name”. In either case, the member’s name will be merged into a single field for Account Name. Note that this solution is applicable for organizations that organize members by individual member name and not by company.

You can import other information into MembershipWorks. To do this you will need to create a custom field in your membership templates (under Customization). When importing you should assign the column header name to exactly match the description you created for the custom field. Learn how to set up your membership templates.

You may import payments and notes to the Timeline under the account with the following column titles accordingly. Note that you can only upload 1 note and 1 payment of each type per row, if you need to upload more transactions you will need to use the update feature described below.

• Membership Payment Date
• Membership Payment Amount
• Membership Payment Tax
• Membership Payment Note
• Event Payment Date
• Event Payment Amount
• Event Payment Tax
• Event Payment Note
• Event Payment Event
• Donation Payment Date
• Donation Payment Amount
• Donation Payment Tax
• Donation Payment Note
• Other Payment Date
• Other Payment Amount
• Other Payment Tax
• Other Payment Note
• Note Date
• Note Note
• Note Tags

Note: “Event Payment Event” refers to the event name. Event payments can be imported into Timelines, but they would not be associated with any event on your event calendar even if the event name is the same.

Importing Multiple Payments/Notes Per Account

If you have multiple payments or Timeline notes that need to be imported for each account, it would be easiest to import the accounts first, then upload the payments or Timeline notes as an update. Separate payments of each type and Timeline notes into separate spreadsheets – ie. 1 spreadsheet for all the donations, 1 spreadsheet for all the membership payments, 1 spreadsheet for all the Timeline notes, etc. Use the column headings above for the information for the payment type or Timeline note. Then add the “Account ID” column, or “Update Only” plus “Email” or “Account Name” column, so we know which account to associate that entry/row with:

• If using the Account ID column, the row value should indicate the account ID of the member account you want to add the entry to.
• If using the Update Only column, each row value should be “Y”, and you will need to provide either the Email or Account Name column for us to match the appropriate member account. Note that if we find more than one matching email address or account name, the entry will not be imported as we would not know which account to properly add the entry to.

Emailing Receipts

If you are importing payments as a batch and need to email receipts to your members, you can include a column titled “Email Receipt”, with row values “Y” to indicate that we should send out a receipt email for the payment. Note that we recommend not importing more than 500 payments requiring emailed receipts at a time.

For organizations who primarily have business members, we would recommend that you structure your membership templates to use the systems “Account name” field to collect a member’s business name and use the system’s “Contact name” field to collect the primary contact name for the account. When importing your members you should structure your column headers as follows:

• Account name – displays the Business Name; for members without business names, their name should be entered in the account name field
• Contact name – the name of the individual who will be managing the account.

Each member has the capability for additional contacts to be added to their account. When importing additional contacts, the way your spreadsheet will be set up will be determined on whether you have only one additional contact that is being added to the members account or more than one additional contact.

How to Import One Additional Contact Per Account

To add one additional contact to a member’s account, your import can include the following column headers:

• Alternate First Name
• Alternate Last Name
• Alternate Name
• Alternate Position
• Alternate Phone
• Alternate Fax
• Alternate Email
• Alternate Address 1
• Alternate City
• Alternate State
• Alternate Country
• Alternate Zip
• Alternate Label
• Alternate Directory
• Alternate Note

How to Import More than One Additional Contact Per Account

To import more than one contact per member account, you will need to separate your spreadsheets into two imports. One import file will contain just the main member’s information and the second import file will be to update the existing member records with their additional contacts.

When formatting your spreadsheet for the additional contact import, you can include the same column headers listed above but will also need to include the following column headers:

• Account Name – Set to the name of the account the contact is being added to
• Email – Set to the email address of the member the contact is being added to
• Update Only – Add the value Y to each row in this column to indicate the import is to update an existing member’s records

Below is a sample of what the import for the additional contacts would look like. Download a sample spreadsheet.

For organizations who have a mix of business and individual members, we would recommend that you structure your membership templates to use the following fields:

• Account name – company names will go here as will individual names for those who are to be listed as individuals
• Contact name – use this field for businsses to list the name of the person who will be managing the account. It can be blank for those who are listed as individuals

For organizations who have individual memberships, we would recommend that you structure your membership templates to use the following fields:

• Account name – this is where the member’s name (e.g. Sally Smith, LMSCW) will go
• Organization name – use this field to collect the company name affiliated with the individual (e.g. Family Medical Group)

Yes, you can by default not have members listed in your directory unless they opt in to be a part of it. To prevent directory listing by default:

1. Add a column to your initial member import called “Do Not List in Directory”
2. In the “Do not list in directory” column, put the letter Y in the column for all rows

Members can manually opt to be a part of the directory by following these instructions:

1. Log into your account (provide them a link to your account manage page)
2. In the Profile tab, uncheck the circle next to “Do not list in directory” 
3. Click Save