How to import customers with Excel in Books?

TB Books · data-migration · Last updated October 13, 2026 · Version 1

This process works in apps: TB Books, TB Sync, TB WMS, TB POS, TB One

This article will teach you how to bulk-load customers from CSV (individuals and businesses), map names and optional tax/price, and choose Add, Update, or Add or Update.

Customer Import V2 lives under Organization Settings → Data Migration → Customers. Upload a CSV, map columns, then import. You do not need a single “Name” column: map Company Name for businesses, or First Name and Last Name for individuals (or a display Name). Optional Type, Tax Rate, and Price Level columns are supported. If Tax Rate or Price Level are skipped, new customers receive this organization’s default tax rate and default price level when those defaults exist.

Steps

• Go to Settings → Data Migration (Organization Settings) in Books, Sync, WMS, POS, or One.
• Under Imports, pick Customers and upload a UTF-8 CSV (max 2,000 rows per file).
• Map identity columns: Company Name for businesses, First Name + Last Name for individuals, and/or Name as a display name. Map Type when your file has individual vs business values.
• Optionally map Email, Phone, Address, City, State, Zip, Account #, Credit Limit, Tax Rate, and Price Level (match tax/price names exactly as they appear in Settings).
• Choose how to handle existing customers: Add (create only; skip matches), Update (update matches only), or Add or Update (create or update). Matching uses email first, then Account #.
• Click Import and review Created, Updated, Skipped, and any row errors.
• Open Customers and spot-check a few rows — individuals should show first/last name; businesses should show company name; tax and price should match what you mapped or the org defaults.

Conclusion & best practices

Updates only change mapped non-blank fields, so a CSV with just email + tax rate can refresh tax without wiping phone or address. Blank cells never clear existing data. Unknown tax rate or price level names fail that row instead of inventing values. Prefer email (and Account #) as stable keys before a large Add or Update run. Customer import is CSV only — if mapping dropdowns show random or garbled characters after an .xlsx upload, save the spreadsheet as CSV UTF-8 and try again (do not rename .xlsx to .csv). This import always uses the first row of the CSV as the header. Clicking a different header row is on Product Catalog (Select Your Header Row) and on a vendor connection’s Field Mapping (Preview & Header Selection). Product Catalog import is the wizard that accepts Excel. To clear a test customer list, use Data Migration → Danger Zone → Delete Customers: customers with no invoices or jobs are deleted; customers that already have records are archived (Inactive) and stay linked. Invoices are never changed to No customer. This article documents Customer Import V2.