Do a Trial Run

By running a test import, you can ensure that you resolve all your data integrity issues before importing your entire set of records. A trial run of 15-20 records (rows in your template) is a good test size.

To build your test import, look for records in your template with many cells populated, that will create many different types of records (i.e. two or more Contacts in a Household Account, organization Affiliations for different Contacts, multiple Opportunities, etc.). In other words, be sure you’re testing the hard cases, not the easy ones. Once you run the test import, spend some time in Salesforce checking out where your imported data landed. Make sure NPSP created the right types of records and the information in the individual CSV cells went to the right Salesforce fields.

If you see unintended results, re-examine your data for integrity, validity, format in the template, as well as mappings. After you clean that up, re-run your test (or another batch of test records). Once you have this smaller group of records importing the way you should, repeat the now refined import process on your full import file.

Have your test file ready to go? Upload Data from the Template!