Your First Week

Importing your existing family list

Quick answer: Prepare a CSV with one row per parent (including their students' info in separate columns). Go to Settings → Import Data, upload the file, map your columns to Growth Suite fields, and import. Start with a 5-row test before importing the full list.

Why this matters first

Most schools have data in a previous system — a spreadsheet, an older CRM, a paper file. Getting that data into Growth Suite is the foundation for everything else. Communications, forms, automations all depend on having the right families in place.

Before you import

1. Get your data into a single spreadsheet

One row per parent. Standard columns:

• Parent first name, parent last name
• Email, phone, address
• Student 1 first name, Student 1 last name, Student 1 grade or DOB
• Student 2 first name, Student 2 last name, Student 2 grade or DOB
• (Repeat for up to 4 students)
• Status / tags column (enrolled, prospect, waitlist, etc.)
• Any school-specific fields you track (program, classroom, payment plan, etc.)

2. Clean the data before importing

Common issues to fix:

• Duplicate parents (same email appearing twice)
• Inconsistent capitalization (CHRISTOPHER, Christopher, christopher)
• Empty rows in the middle of the spreadsheet
• Date formats that mix MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY
• Special characters that may not import cleanly

This is the most painful part of importing. Spend the time here, because cleaning data later (after it's in the system and you've started messaging families) is much harder.

3. Make sure the custom fields exist in Growth Suite

If your spreadsheet has columns Growth Suite doesn't have a place for — like "preferred language" or "carpool group" — create the matching custom field in Settings → Custom Fields before importing. See the custom fields article in Batch 1.5.

4. Save your spreadsheet as a CSV

Growth Suite imports CSV files. From Excel or Google Sheets, use File → Save As (or Download) and pick CSV format.

Step-by-step import

1. Open the import tool

1. Click Settings in the main menu.
2. Click Import Data.
3. Click + New Import or similar.

2. Upload your CSV

Drag and drop your CSV file, or click to browse and select it. Growth Suite reads the file and shows the column headers.

3. Map columns to fields

For each column in your CSV, pick the matching Growth Suite field from a dropdown. Standard fields (first name, last name, email, phone) are obvious. For custom fields, find the matching field you created earlier.

If a column has no corresponding field, you can skip it — that data won't be imported.

4. Start with a 5-row test

Before importing the whole file, do a test with the first 5 rows. This catches mapping mistakes early. Look at the imported records:

• Do parent names look right?
• Did student information land in the correct slots?
• Are tags applied as expected?
• Are dates formatted correctly?

If anything looks wrong, delete the 5 test records, fix the issue (in your CSV or in the column mapping), and try again.

5. Import the rest

Once the test looks right, run the full import. Depending on your list size, this takes a few seconds to a few minutes.

6. Spot-check after

Open 10 random records from across your list. Confirm everything imported correctly. If something's off, you'll catch it now while the import is fresh in memory.

Common issues

• Duplicate detection. Growth Suite matches incoming records to existing contacts by email. If a parent already exists, the import updates them rather than creating a duplicate.
• Missing emails. If a parent row has no email, Growth Suite uses phone as a fallback for duplicate matching. If neither is present, you'll get duplicates with subsequent imports.
• Tag formatting. Tags in the import should be comma-separated. "enrolled, parent-active" gets parsed as two tags.
• Date parsing. Always use YYYY-MM-DD format for dates if possible. Other formats sometimes get misinterpreted.

Tips

• Back up your CSV before importing. If something goes wrong, having the original file untouched is a lifesaver.
• Import in batches if your list is huge. Some schools have 500+ family records. Splitting into smaller imports (100 at a time) makes troubleshooting easier.
• Don't import historical communications. Past emails and call notes don't import cleanly. Start fresh with Growth Suite's communication history.

Related articles

• Adding your first families
• Your first week with Growth Suite