Data Preparation

Data preparation can be one of the most complex and time consuming stages of the project – time and resource will need to be allocated accordingly. The purpose of this stage is to transform your company data into comma separated value (CSV) files, a form is easily read by Promoserve.

The templates are available from Example Import Files

Data required by the system can be grouped into the following functional categories:

• Customer, Prospect – names & addresses of customers, contacts, suppliers and prospective customers. We advise you populate these spreadsheets with as much data as you have available so that you have a rich data set available to you when you go live.

• Product data load, product descriptions, images, cost and selling prices, additional costs. If you are a distributor then this information will most likely come from your catalogue group or from the Trade-Only Search website. If you are a supplier you will most likely need to populate these spreadsheets. Please ask your implementation consultant for further guidance on this. Correctly Formatted Product data is available from most of the major promotional products suppliers please see www.promoservelink.co.uk or click here to download a product data order form

• PromoServe is supplied with industry standard codes for print methods, print positions etc. Click Here to obtain CSV files of the most recent versions of these lists.

• Existing jobs. We would advise creating all new quotes, sales orders, job bags etc from the point of going live and that any existing jobs are left in your old systems until they are completed. It is possible however to load existing quotes, sales orders, job bags etc into the system but we would regard this as non-critical and recommend that these data loads are used only when absolutely necessary.

• Accounts – nominal codes, opening balances, customer and supplier account references. The Promoserve sales nominal codes have been set up match the Sage accounts systems nominal codes and an automated link to Sage can be set up relatively easily. If you are using the Promoserve accounts module then this it will need setting up with opening balances, the current credit and debit positions of your customers and suppliers and your trial balance as at the beginning of the go-live accounting period.

You will have been emailed as set of example templates which can be used for data import into your system. Populate these templates with your data and when you are happy, save as a CSV file in readiness for import.

CSV files can easily be created from Excel spreadsheets using the File -> “Save As” then choose “CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv)” as the file type.

We can also provide assistance with migrating data from existing systems such as Sage, ACT etc
ACT diary history can prove more difficult but there are third party software packages available that will help migrate this information into your PromoServe System - please see http://www.actaddons.com/products/123-act-to-csv-export.asp

• Please click here to download a list of PromoServe Link Supported Suppliers; their data is available for use within PromoServe and can be relied upon for 100% accurate quotes, sales orders and eCommerce.