The following documentation provides instructions on how to make mass changes to customer records using the customer import function. 


NOTE: If you are utilizing an e-commerce, accounting, or ERP system integration into EXEMPTAX, please view additional instructions regarding integration to EXEMPTAX' supported interfaces as additional features and customizations may apply.
 

Please keep in mind that access to customer import might be restricted for some user roles; please contact your EXEMPTAX account owner to check if you have sufficient access rights to perform this function.


NOTE: Please also check the documentation on how to manually upload customer master records, how to upload multiple shipping states to a single customer, or how to upload Customer Tags via customer import for additional information.


1. Select the icon "Company Settings" in your Dashboard. 

2. Once in the "Company Settings" function, press on "Customer Import" on the left menu bar and navigate to the "Bulk_import_template.xlsx" file. Then download the sample import template file to your local machine.

3. Open the Excel document and populate the import file with all relevant changes to your customer master data. In this example, we added a new billing address to company "Blueberry Inc" and an email address to the company "Strawberry Inc".

4. When finished with all changes and updates, save your import file, and navigate to the Drag & Drop box. From there you can either drag and drop your new import file or browse locally to your import file. When your import file is successfully selected, it will show up beside the Drag & Drop box. You can then press the button "Upload Files" to continue.


INFO: Once your new import file is uploaded successfully; your customer master records will be updated and overridden with those changes.

5. As soon as the customer import file is fully uploaded, you can see progress and historical files of the most recent uploads in the "Import History" box.


TIP: To check if a file import contained errors, press on the "Details" link for a particular upload.

6. The "Details" view will provide two tabs: "Errors" and "Warnings". In this example the import file contained three actual errors and three warnings with specific instructions as to what type of error or warning and the corresponding row. 


TIP: Once you located and corrected the errors on your import file, you can repeat the process outlined here until your import file is free of errors. 


NOTE: Data rows with errors will not be uploaded into EXEMPTAX and those errors need to be corrected. Data rows with warnings will be uploaded into EXEMPTAX but it is advisable to also correct rows with warnings. Once all errors or warnings are corrected, simply attempt another upload by repeating the steps outlined here.



Tips and Best Practices: Please see below additional details regarding uploading or maintaining customer master records via manual upload:

  • It is best to use the provided import template (Step 2 above) to ensure that you always utilize the latest version.

  • Please note that the only required filed in the import template is "Company Name"; all other fields are optional. NOTE: Even though certain fields are optional, missing data in fields may prevent you from utilizing certain EXEMPTAX functions. For instance if your customer record doesn't haven't an email address, you will not be able to send customers an email campaign. 

  • Please don't change the columns and headers on the import template prior to uploading as this might result in errors or warnings.

  • If you wish to populate the "Country Code" fields, then please use the correct two-digit code for a country.

  • Please only utilize one of the thirteen exemption reasons listed below without changing the spelling or wording to avoid errors or warnings:
    • Agricultural Production
    • Charitable Organization
    • Direct Pay Permit
    • Direct Mail
    • Educational Organization
    • Federal Government
    • Foreign Diplomat
    • Industrial Production or Manufacturers
    • Religious Organization
    • Resale
    • State Government
    • Tribal government
    • Other
  • Please only utilize any of the following acceptable characters: a-zA-Z0-9,.?@&!#'~* _;+-

  • Please note that the "Customer Name" and "Account Number" fields are limited to a maximum of forty-one characters.

  • As an FYI, if you leave the field "Default Exemption Reason" blank, the system will set the "Default Exemption Reason" for that customer automatically to "Resale".

  • Please note, that if a customer ships to more than one state, then please duplicate the entire row for that customer and add each additional shipping states into field "Shipping State Code" (Please see documentation here).