Importing customers and articles (CSV, Excel)

Rhinvoice imports customers and articles from the program you used before, from CSV or Excel files (.xlsx, .xls). Every import starts with a test run that changes nothing; Rhinvoice saves only after you have checked the result.

Customers and articles first, invoices last

Old invoices look for their customer when they are imported. So import customers and articles first, the invoices afterwards (taking over old invoices).

How to import

1. Export customers or articles from the old program as a CSV or Excel file.
2. Open Customers → Import or Articles → Import and click Choose file.
3. Check the mapping of the columns under Map columns.
4. Under If the entry exists already, choose what happens to existing entries.
5. Check the Result of the test run. Every row shows whether it is New, Updated, Skipped or an Error.
6. Click Import … customers or Import … articles. Only this saves.

The test run does the same import as the real one, only without saving. What it reports, including the numbers it assigns, is exactly what importing does.

Files and encodings

• CSV in UTF-8 (also UTF-16 with BOM) or Windows-1252. Rhinvoice detects the delimiter, such as semicolon or comma, by itself.
• Excel in the current .xlsx and the old .xls format. Rhinvoice tells the file type from the content, not from the extension.
• Limits per file: at most 5 MB, 10,000 rows and 100 columns. Split larger lists into several files.

Recognising and mapping columns

Rhinvoice recognises the columns by usual names, ignoring case, umlauts and punctuation. “Kunden-Nr.”, “KdNr” and “Customer number” all become the customer number; “MwSt-Satz” and “VAT rate” become the VAT rate.

Whatever is not recognised, you map by hand under Map columns: for each column of the file, choose the Rhinvoice field under Becomes, or Do not import. An example value from the file helps.

Save as template keeps the mapping under a name. It fits every file with the same column names and is offered under Template at the next import; Detected automatically uses the recognition again. Deleting a template keeps the imported data.

What is imported

Customers

Field	Note
Number	Without one, the customer gets the next free number
Company name, or First name and Last name	Without a company name, the customer is created as a person
Salutation, Contact person
Address	Street (with number), or separately with House number, plus Address supplement, Postal code and City, or both in one column (Postal code and city, also “CH-9470 Buchs”)
Country	As name or code; without it, your company’s country applies
Email, Phone
VAT number
Group, Note
Currency, Language	CHF or EUR, German or English
Discount in %, Payment terms in days, Tax exempt
Customer since Since version 0.4.3	For example from “Kunde seit”, “Angelegt am” or “Created”, as 14.03.2019 or 2019-03-14, also with a time

Needed is a column for the customer number or the name (company or last name). New customers also need postal code and city.

Articles

Field	Note
Number	Without one, the article gets the next free number
Name, Description	New articles need a name
Unit	As code or label, such as “Std.”, “Stunden”, “HUR”, “pro Monat”, “jährlich”
Price (company currency), Price CHF, Price EUR	One price per currency
VAT rate	As a percentage or a name (“Normal”, “reduziert”, “befreit”)
Group
Goods/service	Empty counts as a service

Rhinvoice reads amounts in Swiss, German and English notation. Whether “1.500” means one thousand five hundred or one and a half depends on your company’s country.

Former VAT rates

Article lists of older programs often hold rates that no longer apply. Rhinvoice knows the former rates of your company’s country and gives the article the matching VAT rate: in Switzerland for example the standard rates 7.7 % (2018 to 2023) and 8 % (2011 to 2017) according to the ESTV, in Germany the rates of 16 % and 5 % from 1 July to 31 December 2020. On the invoice, the rate of the date of supply then applies. A rate your country never had, such as 19 % for a Swiss company, is reported as an error of the row.

If the entry exists already

A customer is the same if it has the same customer number or, without a number, the same name and postal code. An article is the same if it has the same article number or, without a number, the same name.

Choice	What happens
Skip	The existing entry stays as it is
Update	Filled cells overwrite the entry, empty cells change nothing; street and house number change together
Create anew	A second entry is created; if the number is taken, it gets the next free one

So you can import a file twice, for example a second time with Update when a column was missing.

Rows with errors

Rhinvoice never guesses. A row with an unclear value (not an amount, an unknown unit, an unknown VAT rate, a currency other than CHF and EUR …) is reported with field, reason and value and not imported; it uses up no number. The other rows are imported. Download report (CSV) gives you all rows with their result.

In the public demo

The public demo takes no files: importing is switched off there. Try it on an installation of your own; with Docker that takes a few minutes.

Questions

Which files can I import into Rhinvoice?

CSV files in UTF-8 or Windows-1252, and Excel files in .xlsx and .xls format. A file may be at most 5 MB and have at most 10,000 rows.

What happens to customers that already exist in Rhinvoice?

You choose before importing. Rhinvoice skips them, updates them or creates them anew. When updating, empty cells change nothing, so an export with fewer columns never erases data.

Do I have to map the columns by hand?

Mostly not. Rhinvoice recognises usual column names such as "Customer number", "Postal code" or "VAT number". Whatever it does not recognise you map by hand and save as a template for the next import.

Are former VAT rates such as 7.7 % recognised?

Yes. Rhinvoice knows the former rates of your country, such as 7.7 % and 8 % in Switzerland or 16 % and 5 % in Germany, and gives the article the matching VAT rate.