PestBossPro Blog — Pest Control Software

Moving Your Customer List Into Pest Control Software With a CSV Import

The thing that stops many small pest companies from switching to software isn't the price or the learning curve. It's the thought of typing in every customer. Three hundred quarterly accounts, each with an address, a phone number and a note about the dog, is a lot of evenings. A CSV import means you type them zero times.

Residential and Commercial, Same Import

Commercial clients with many locations, covered in Monthly Statements for Commercial Pest Control Accounts: One Bill for Every Location, and residential quarterly customers can both come in through the same import.

A CSV file is a plain spreadsheet saved in a simple format that almost every program can produce. If your customers are in a spreadsheet today, you can save it as CSV. If they are in another system, most systems can export to CSV.

Clean the List Before You Import

An import copies what is in the file. If the file has problems, the software will too. Spend an hour cleaning first:

• Remove duplicates. The same customer entered twice becomes two clients, which causes double scheduling and confusion.
• Remove old accounts. Customers who cancelled years ago don't need to come along, or tag them as inactive.
• Fix addresses. Full street address, city, state and zip in their own columns. Typos in the street name are the most common reason an address lands in the wrong place.
• Standardize phone numbers. One format, one column per number type.
• Put one value per cell. Don't cram the gate code, the dog and the service plan into one notes cell if you can split them.

Columns Worth Including

At minimum: customer name, service address, city, state, zip, phone and email. Beyond that, include what you'll want on day one:

• Billing address, if different from the service address
• Access and service notes, like gate codes and pets
• The service they are on, such as quarterly or monthly
• Anything you track as a tag or custom field, like a lead source or a commercial store number

For commercial clients with several locations, put each location on its own row with the same client name, then check after the import that every location sits under one client with many addresses.

Addresses Land on the Map Automatically

Here is the part that makes the import more than a list. Imported addresses are placed on the map automatically. As soon as the import finishes, your customers show up as pins, which means they show up on the Waiting List and in routing.

Spot-check a few after the import, especially rural addresses or new subdivisions. If a pin looks off, check the address on the property for a typo and correct it.

What to Set Up After the Import

The import brings in clients and addresses. A few things are worth doing right after:

1. Confirm recurring plans on each account — 90, 60 or 30 days — and the last service date, so accounts come due at the right time.
2. Measure properties on the satellite map, starting with the accounts coming due soonest.
3. Collect cards on file from recurring customers as they come up on the route.
4. Set Monthly billing on commercial clients that want one statement.

Your first week of setup is covered step by step in Setting Up Pest Control Software in Your First Week.

Do a Test Import First

Before importing your whole list, try a small one. Take ten or twenty rows, including a commercial client with several locations, a rural address and a customer with long notes, and import just those. Check how each one came through: the name, the address on the map, the notes, the phone and email. If something landed in the wrong place, fix the column in the spreadsheet and try again. Once the small test looks right, import the rest with confidence. Twenty minutes of testing is far quicker than cleaning up three hundred accounts after the fact.

What About Old Records?

Customer lists move easily. Old paper chemical records and service tickets are another matter. Most owners keep historical records where they are, in the binder or the old system's export, for as long as their state requires, and start fresh application records in the new system from day one. Check your state lead agency's rules on how long records must be kept.

A clean import is the fastest way to get value from pest control software, because every feature depends on the client list being right. For how imported accounts flow into the Waiting List, routes and billing, see the PestBossPro pest control software page.