This tutorial video will show you how to take an existing CSV file of products, such as the one you could get from a vendor, and adapt it to import into SynkedUP. We recommend using the CSV import for materials, and then most people find it easier to enter labor, equipment, and subcontractors manually within the SynkedUP interface, as there usually are not that many. But there usually are thousands of material items.

At a minimum, you'll need to populate the Class, Name, Unit, and Cost columns. That will be sufficient to get started. We also suggest using the columns marked in orange below, as it is much faster to bulk edit items in a CSV before importing than it is within the SynkedUp interface one by one after importing. In the screenshot below, the required columns are marked in yellow, and the optional columns are marked in orange.

Classes Column:

Classes are set using a numerical value as follows: For a Labor item, enter 0 into the Class column, for a Material item, enter 2 into the Class column, and so on. Here are the codes and their corresponding values.

Name Column:

Enter the Item Name as you want it to appear in the item catalog

Units Column:

Enter the units of the item, such as: each, lb, sq ft, or hour, etc

Cost Column:

Enter the cost of the item. The price you pay, not the price you want to charge. The SynkedUP system will calculate the price you need to charge. (Of course, you can override as you wish later, but in this step, enter your cost of the item)

​Taxable Column:

Enter a numerical value to signify if you pay tax on the item or not. You can't type in "NO" or "YES". Only "0" or "1" are acceptable values.

Note:

This taxable value signifies whether you as the contractor pay tax (not the customer on the invoice) on this item, essentially increasing your cost of the item. Meaning that your true cost on a $10 item would actually be $10.60 if you had a 6% tax you had to pay.

Description column:

Helpful to record additional info about this item.

Categories Column:

Create categories to assign items to a category. Using the categories function will allow you to filter your item catalog by category when building an estimate. You can assign multiple categories to the same item by separating each category with a comma like this: hardscape, vendor name, etc

Custom Margin Column:

If you want to apply a modified profit margin (different from your default profit margin set at your budget) to any particular item or group of items, just make sure you enter a value (plain number) in the Custom Margin column, such as 40. That would apply a 40% custom profit margin to that item.

Tags Column:

This is super helpful for making items easier to find when searching your item catalog. It is common for people to use various search terms for the same item, and instead of trying to put all those terms in the item name, you can use tags like a keywords feature. This allows you to keep a nice clean simple item name, and then add as many tags as you want so they come up in search results in the Item Catalog Browser.

*Warning! Take care to not alter the order in which the columns are placed in the template files.

Here's the tutorial to walk you through the process of preparing your Import Template:

In SynkedUP, go to System Setup in the main menu and then click on Import & Export.

Hit the light blue Download CSV Template button under the Items bar to download the file.

Go to your downloads folder on your computer and open the file. I'll call this the SynkedUP Template file.

This tutorial assumes you have a spreadsheet with all the items that you want to import. I'll call this the Vendor File. Open that file as well.

The Vendor File in this tutorial has a Product Group that corresponds to the Categories on the SynkedUP Template.

Click on the top cell in the Product Group column in the Vendor File and then hit Ctrl Shift and the down arrow. This selects the whole column. Then hit Ctrl C to copy the column.

Click on the top cell in the Categories column in the SynkedUP Template File and hit Ctrl V to paste the entire column.

Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the rest of the columns. In the video, I copied Part Num > Description, Part Description > Name, and Contractor Each > Cost.

Now we're ready to finish the rest of the Required Columns in the SynkedUP Template File. If your Items are all Materials, enter 2 in the top cell in the Class column. If they're something other than Materials, check the numbers and their values in the introduction of this article.

Click on the top cell where you entered 2. Hit Ctrl C. Now select the cell underneath it and drag your mouse down till you reach the end of the Items.

Hit Ctrl V. This will paste 2 into each cell.

Repeat step 7 for the Taxable column. Enter 0 if the item is Untaxable and 1 if the item is Taxable.

We're going to do something similar for the Units column. Type ea (or sq ft or lin ft or ton - in whatever measurements you sell the item) into the top cell. Hit Ctrl C, then select the entire column like you did in Step 7, and hit Ctrl V to paste.

Select all the columns that you've entered values into. You can do this by clicking on the bar with the letters at the top of the spreadsheet and dragging till you've selected all of the ones that have information.

Go to Home on the toolbar, and in the Number section, click on the dropdown.

Select Text in the dropdown. This ensures that your file has the correct formatting and will import without errors.

Ok, now we're ready to go back to SynkedUP and upload our Template. Go into System Setup again and click on Import & Export.

Click on the Import from CSV button under the Items bar.

Click on your SynkedUP Template File and then hit Open.

Note:
Make sure that your file is a .csv extension. If it's not, open it and click Save As, then change the extension to .csv.

You should see a success message after the import has completed.