The first step to in the Accounts Payable Import process is to populate an Excel spreadsheet with the data you with to import. Thankfully Sage Intacct provides an import template to make this job easier. The blank import template can be downloaded by going to the Company Setup Checklist in Company > Data > Import Data.
Scroll down to the section called ‘Set Up AP Master List, Open Bills and Adjustments’ and below that you will see the options available for the Accounts Payable Bills: Create, Import, Template and View. The first step to importing is to download the template, so click ‘Template’ and save the file in a logical place on your hard drive. Please Note: Because Intacct is always being worked on and improved it is important that you download a new template every time you wish to do an import, whether you are doing an AP Bill import or any other import.
Once the template is downloaded you will want to open it in Excel for editing. In the first row across the top you will see the column names and in the second row you will see pertinent information about how to complete each column. Most import templates will be in this same format so it’s useful to familiarize yourself with the template. The second row gives you information about are things such as field length, field type, default value, dependencies and whether or not the field is required.
In order to import the data it will need to be populated in this spreadsheet according to the specifications provided. If you are migrating data from an old system you can hopefully export information from the old system and then copy/paste it into the Intacct template rather than re-typing it all. It is important, however, that the column headers not be modified as that will make the import fail. If, however, there are columns that are not being used and are not flagged as required, you can delete them from the spreadsheet.
Please ensure that all of your bills are for positive values. Negative values can cause problems in the AP subledger, AR subledger and also the GL.
Once you are satisfied with your data input you will need to save the Excel file in a *.cvs format. In order to export the data to a CSV from Excel you go to File > Save as and from the dropdown select CSV as shown below:
Next week we will go over the steps to importing the opening transactions.
