Import existing data into TatvaCRM

Updated 31 May 2026·6 min read

Move your existing contacts, companies, deals, and leads into TatvaCRM. Covers CSV imports from Excel, WhatsApp lists, Tally exports, and other CRMs (Zoho, HubSpot, Salesforce, LeadSquared).

Most businesses signing up for TatvaCRM already have customer data somewhere — an Excel sheet, a WhatsApp Business contact export, an old Zoho database, a spreadsheet your CA shares quarterly. This guide explains how to bring it all in without losing anything important.

The right order to import

Companies first (if you sell B2B)
Contacts second — link to the companies you just imported
Deals third — link to the contacts and companies
Leads fourth — these are typically separate from your existing data
Activities and tasks last — usually not migrated from elsewhere

What can I import?

TatvaCRM accepts CSV (comma-separated values) and Excel (.xlsx) files for:

Contacts — people you do business with
Companies — organisations
Deals — revenue opportunities
Leads — prospects you haven’t qualified yet
Custom field values — any custom field can be imported alongside built-in fields

Before you start: clean your file

Spend twenty minutes cleaning your file before uploading. It saves hours later.

Check	Why
Remove duplicate rows	TatvaCRM will create duplicates if your file has them. Use Excel’s “Remove Duplicates” before uploading.
Standardise phone numbers	Mix of `9876543210` and `+91-9876543210` in the same column? TatvaCRM cleans up most variations, but consistent input is better.
Fill in or empty critical columns	If 30% of your rows have blank emails, decide: leave blank (we accept that) or look them up first?
One person per row, not one company per row	If your file lists “Mehta Plastics — 3 contacts in one row”, split into 3 rows before uploading.
UTF-8 encoding	If your file has Hindi or Tamil names, save as UTF-8 to preserve characters. Excel’s default is sometimes ANSI which breaks Devanagari.

The import flow, step by step

Go to Contacts → Import (or Companies/Deals/Leads → Import for the other modules).
Upload your CSV or Excel file. Up to 50,000 rows per file.
Map columns. TatvaCRM tries to auto-map columns whose names match (“First Name” → First Name field). For ambiguous ones, pick from a dropdown. Save your mapping as a template if you’ll re-import a similar file later.
Decide on duplicates. Three options:
- Skip duplicates — leave existing records untouched, import only new ones
- Update existing — merge new data into existing records (only fills in blank fields by default)
- Create new anyway — import everything as new records (use with caution)
Assign an owner for the imported records. Options: all to one user, distribute round-robin, or skip (leave unassigned — see warning below).
Preview — TatvaCRM shows you 5 sample rows with the mapping applied. Sanity-check before continuing.
Run import. Files under 1,000 rows finish in seconds. Larger files run in the background — you get an email when done.

Always assign an owner during import

If you skip the “assign owner” step, your imported records have no owner. Users on own or team visibility won’t see them — only Owners and Admins will. The most common cause of “I imported 800 contacts and my reps can’t see any of them” is forgetting this step.

Migrating from Zoho CRM

In Zoho, go to Setup → Data Administration → Export. Export each module (Contacts, Accounts, Deals, Leads) separately. Each comes out as a CSV. Then import into the matching TatvaCRM module. Zoho’s “Accounts” = TatvaCRM’s “Companies”.

See the detailed Migrating from Zoho to TatvaCRM guide on our resources site.

Migrating from Excel

Most Indian SMBs start in Excel. The trick is to split your one big sheet into the right module-specific sheets:

One sheet for Companies — registered name, GSTIN, address, city, sector
One sheet for Contacts — person name, role, email, phone, the company name (text — TatvaCRM links them on import)
One sheet for active Deals — deal name, value, expected close date, contact name (TatvaCRM links)

See Migrating from Excel to a CRM for a complete walk-through with example sheets.

Migrating from WhatsApp Business

WhatsApp Business lets you export your contacts list as a vCard or CSV. Open WhatsApp Business → Settings → Tools → Contact export. Import the resulting file into TatvaCRM as Contacts.

Conversation history doesn’t migrate (different format) — but you’ve got the names and numbers, which is the hard part. Future conversations get logged natively in TatvaCRM.

Common questions

“I imported 500 contacts and they’re wrong. Can I undo?”

Yes — every import is reversible for 30 days. Go to Settings → Import history, find the import, click Undo this import. All 500 contacts get soft-deleted. You can then fix your CSV and re-import.

“What’s the maximum file size?”

50,000 rows per file. If you have more, split into multiple files — TatvaCRM processes them sequentially without duplicates. For files over 10,000 rows, the import runs in the background and you receive an email when complete.

“My import has errors. Where do I see them?”

After every import, TatvaCRM shows a results summary: how many rows imported successfully, how many failed, and why each failure happened. Common errors: invalid email format, phone number missing country code on certain rows, a required field left blank. Download the error report, fix the rows in Excel, and re-import just the failures.

“Can I import custom fields too?”

Yes — but create the custom fields first (Settings → Custom fields), then include matching column headers in your CSV. TatvaCRM will auto-map them. If you import without creating the custom field first, that column is ignored.