How to import pest-control customers from Excel

Do not retype 400 customers

If the book is already in Excel, QuickBooks, or last year’s software export, the first job is a file — not a form. Retyping names is how you invent new spellings and lose phone numbers. Import the list, then fix the ugly rows.

Spestly accepts a CSV. Names, addresses, and contact details land as customers and properties. If the file is a mess, email help@spestly.com. Early companies get help moving it. That is not a promise we will clean every county database for free forever. It is how we treat the first wave.

What to put in the spreadsheet

Use a header row. Keep one customer per row if they have one property. If they have two buildings, two rows with the same customer name is easier than a notes novel in column Z.

Useful columns: name, phone, email, street, city, state, ZIP, and a notes field for gate codes or “dog in yard.” Service name and price can wait until after import if they are inconsistent. Bad emails (example.com, blanks, two addresses in one cell) cause more pain than missing notes.

Save as CSV (comma separated). Excel’s default .xlsx will not upload. If you use accents or Spanish names, export UTF-8 so letters do not turn into symbols.

Clean the obvious before you upload

Delete empty rows. Split “John / Jane Smith” if you need two phones later. Put the ZIP in its own column. US offices should use 5-digit ZIP, not a combined city-state blob.

Do not invent emails so the row “looks complete.” Empty is better than a fake address. Placeholder domains get skipped when mail is sent.

After the file lands

Open a few customers. Check a multi-property account. Add the services you actually sell — general pest, rodent, bed bugs — with a typical price. Then book tomorrow from a real imported address. That is the test. If the map pin is wrong, fix the address once on the property.

Recurring frequencies can be set after import. Do not stall the upload until every quarterly date is perfect. Get the people in, then attach plans. Pest-control software is useless if week one is still a typing project.

When import is the wrong first step

If you have twenty customers, type them. If you have two thousand rows with no headers and three merged cells per account, spend an hour with the sheet before the upload. Software will not guess which column is the billing address.

The seven-day trial is enough to import, book, and invoice. Card to start. Cancel if the file will take a month and you are not ready. We would rather you start when the CSV is boring and correct.