Import leads from a spreadsheet without making a mess
· 1 min read
Bring an existing list into CRM Dost with no duplicates, clear errors, and every lead shared out to your team.
Almost every team arrives at a CRM with a spreadsheet of leads. Importing it should take minutes, not an afternoon of cleaning up duplicates afterwards.
What you need
- An Excel file (.xlsx or .xls) or a CSV, one sheet per import.
- Two columns are required: name and phone. Email, status, priority, the next action date, a description and remarks are optional.
- Download the sample template from the import screen — it comes filled in with your own lead statuses.
Include each number’s country code, or add a countrycode column. It is the single most common reason a phone number is read wrongly.
Errors you can actually fix
A row is skipped only when it has no name or an unusable phone number. Anything else that is wrong — an impossible date, say — is dropped with a warning and the lead is still imported. Skipped and adjusted rows are listed separately, with their row numbers from your sheet, so you can fix the file and try again.
Dates can be written the way people usually type them, such as 21/09/2026 or 21-09-2026. Columns CRM Dost does not recognise are ignored rather than rejected, and it tells you which ones they were.
No duplicates
If a phone number already belongs to a lead in your company, that row is skipped and marked as a duplicate. An import never changes an existing lead, so re-importing a list is safe.
Shared out in one step
Rows without an owner can be dealt out in turn to the people you pick, filtered by role. Each person gets a single notification with how many leads they received, and you can tag the whole batch with a campaign so you can follow it in your reports.