Preparing the Import Template
There are several ways to get inventory items into your Sage Intacct system. The first, which is most often used when setting up a new installation, is the Inventory Items Import. Although the Inventory Items Import is most often used for initial setup of the system it can also be used to add new items on the fly or update current items.
The first step to importing Inventory Items is to populate an Excel spreadsheet with the data you wish 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 > Overview > Import Data.
Scroll down to the section called ‘Set Up Inventory Master List’ and below that you will see the options available for the Inventory Items: 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 improving it is important that you download a new template every time you wish to do an import, whether you are doing an Inventory Item import or any other import.
Once the template is downloaded open it in Excel for editing. You will notice 3 tabs on this spreadsheet: Simple Item Upload, Example- Simple Item Upload and Advanced item Upload. For the purposes of this tutorial we will utilize the Simple Item Upload. 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 things such as field length, field type, default value, dependencies and whether or not the field is required.
In order to import the data the spreadsheet will need to be populated with your data according to the specifications provided in the header. While populating the spreadsheet it is important that the column headers not be modified as Sage Intacct relies on that information for a successful import. In order to keep the spreadsheet less complicated columns that are not being used and are not flagged as required can be deleted from the spreadsheet. Once you are satisfied with your data you will need to save the Excel file in a *.cvs format. In order to export the data to a CSV from Excel 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 inventory items transactions.
