Reimporting clients create dupes, even with same email (unique id?)

Hosted • invoicing.co | v5
1

From my understanding, importing clients with the same email would simply update the information since email works as the unique id.

However, importing just simply dupes them. I went from 800 customers to 1600. If I browse, I can see the same customers duped, both email columns filled with the same email.

Just to sanity check, reimporting a second time with the same emails should just update, not dupe, correct?

2

customers-foobar.csv (550 Bytes)

I took a sample of the 1st 3 rows and foobar’d them

The imports were normalized from PayPal to support InvioceNinja.

3

We match client imports on the client.name only.

When importing invoices, we match on the client.name or client.email otherwise we create a new client record.

4

I could’ve sworn I read from support emails that client.email is the unique identifier, as it wouldn’t make much sense that a name like “David” would be considered unique. What if I have 2 Davids with different emails?

5

When importing invoices, we match on the client.name or client.email otherwise we create a new client record.

When importing invoices, I didn’t experience dupes here – however, I did experience destruction to all client fields except email (which is why I even attempted to reimport clients):

In that same thread, I believe you mentioned that there shouldn’t be destruction when importing. I created a bug report:

6

Are you confusing a new client being created as a destructive action? The existing client will still be present.

7

No, there’s no mistake –

  1. I upload clients with name - email - all address fields - contact phone - client phone. I verify everything’s showing fine. Same # of clients.
  2. I upload payments with most fields. I verify clients still show fine. Same # of clients.
  3. I upload invoices with most fields. If I verify clients will show fine, I the same # of clients, but: all client fields are now wiped except for email (which now dupes to name, replacing the actual name) and a new VTD field.

When I uploaded invoices, it destructively wiped all my existing client fields except email, then duped email to many other fields including name. Then added a new VTD field (the only expected change).

8

This time, uploading clients → payments destructively wiped first and last name, keeping others.

  • I tried to reimport email - first - last name and it made a dupe
  • I tried to reimport name - first - last name and it made a dupe

Neither of these seem to be considered as a unique id when reimporting customers to fill or update missing info, @david

10

Just to confirm, are you uploading both the client and payment csvs in one import?

I’m also not sure why you are separating the mappings for invoices/payments when these can be combined in the same import?

11

Separate imports, although some have crossover data (but the unique ids aren’t being detected, so dupes are created).

I tried selecting 2 csvs before clicking import, but that never works: Upload will say success, but no data will actually fill. I’ll get “Unknown Error” on the email result. I’ve never had any success with that one.

I stopped importing invoices, only clients → payments. I can’t do just payments because there’s not enough client info.

12

As I trial-and-error more, I also realized that refunds amounts are missing from the invoice upload that seems to be exclusive to payments.

Intentional?