Importing and exporting B2B companies and buyers

You can bring your trade accounts into Orbit from a file, with their buyers, permissions and spending limits in the same rows. You can also send your companies back out to a file. Both live on the Companies page, under Customers.

Considerations

• B2B is included in the Enterprise plan.
• Your file can be a CSV, XLSX or XLS file.
• Company Name is the only required column. Until it is mapped, the import cannot start.
• Each row holds one company. The User columns on that row add one of its buyers.
• Companies are Matched by name or external ID, so keep those columns tidy.

Prepare your file

Click Download sample CSV on the first screen of the import to get the column names. These are the columns Orbit looks for.

The Company group:

• Company Name: the business name. This column is required.
• Company External ID: your own reference for the company, such as its ID in your accounts system.
• Company Status: Active or Suspended.
• Tax ID: the company's VAT number.
• Note: any notes you keep about the account.

The User group, for the person who buys for that company:

• User Email: the buyer's work email address.
• User First Name and User Last Name: their name.
• User Role: their role on the company record.
• User Permissions: what that person is allowed to do.
• User Spending Limit: their Per-order spending limit. An empty value means no limit.
• Main Contact: whether this person is the company's main contact.

These are the permissions a buyer can hold: View company orders, Place orders, Add users, Delete users, Manage permissions, Request quotes, View company quotes, View invoices, Pay invoices, Manage company profile and Manage addresses.

Your headings do not have to match word for word. Orbit picks up common alternatives, such as VAT number for Tax ID. Anything it cannot place, you map by hand.

Note: A file you exported from Orbit has a User Status column. The import has nowhere to put it, so it is ignored and listed as a warning.

Import companies

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Customers, then Companies.
2. Click Import at the top of the page. Import companies opens.
3. Click Add File and pick your file, or drop it on the box.
4. Under This import should…, tick Create new records, Update existing records, or both. Pick at least one, or the import cannot start.
5. Click Upload & Preview. The Preview import step opens.
6. Check the Companies and Contact users counts and the First company preview table.
7. Check the badge on Column mappings. All required fields mapped means you are ready.
8. Click Import Companies. The Importing companies step shows the progress.
9. Click Close & Continue in Background to carry on working. A small panel keeps the progress in view and tells you when it is done.

Create new records adds rows that match nothing in your store. Update existing records changes companies that match, and only the columns in your file change. A row is skipped when it matches an existing company and updating is unticked, or matches nothing and creating is unticked.

Map your columns

1. On the Preview import step, click Column mappings. The Map columns step opens.
2. Read down the CSV Column list. An Auto badge means Orbit matched that heading for you.
3. Under Maps To, choose the Orbit field for each column. The list is grouped into Company and User, and a required field is marked with a star.
4. Choose Do not import for any column you want to leave out.
5. Click Import Companies, or click Back to Preview to look again.

Warning: If Company Name is not mapped, Import Companies stays greyed out and a warning names the missing field. Without it, every row would fail.

Read the result

When the import finishes you get one of these:

• Import successful: every company came in.
• Import partially successful: some rows could not be imported. Review the errors.
• Import skipped: no changes were made, because matching companies already existed.
• Import failed: the import could not be completed.

Under the heading you see how many companies were created, updated, skipped and failed. Click Show error details to read the failures row by row, or Download CSV for the full list. Show skipped companies lists the rows that were left alone and why, such as Already exists. Warnings do not block an import, but check them if a row only came in part way.

Export companies

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Customers, then Companies.
2. Click Export at the top of the page. Export companies opens. To export a few accounts, tick them in the list first and click Export in the bar that appears.
3. Under Exports, choose All companies, Selected companies or Filtered results. Each option shows how many companies it covers.
4. Under Export as, choose Excel Format (.xlsx) or Plain CSV (.csv).
5. Click Export companies. The dialog closes and the export runs in the background.

A small panel shows Exporting companies while the file is built. When it says Your file is ready, the file downloads on its own. Click Download to get it again.

Tip: Export before a big import. You then have a copy of every company as it was, and the file already has the right columns to edit and send back.

Related guides

• Adding a B2B company
• Building a B2B price catalogue
• Managing B2B invoices
• Managing your customer list