Data import: Handling CSV files

A collection of instructions. Consider this a friendly “there’s a lot that can be wrong with your file, let’s investigate” response from the Operating customer support team.

Written By Matti Parviainen

Last updated 14 days ago

Basic import of time entries (along with People, Clients and Projects)

Recommended tools

You’re probably exporting the CSV contents from some other application. It’s going to be in the raw CSV format. When you open it in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, the spreadsheet application will try to apply formatting to it and save it in their own file format (such as .xlsx).

If you don’t need to do any spreadsheet magic, we recommend you use a plain-text editor such as VS Code, EditPad Lite, or BBEdit. These apps show the file in “raw” format rather than try to create a table, interpret the headers, guess what number is a date and so on.

Recommended workflow

Manipulate the CSV file in a plain-text editor whenever possible. Do not change the file encoding – that’s a sure way to break the äöé characters that are in your person and customer names.

Make sure you have all of the required columns in the file. Up-to-date examples and instructions are found inside the Operating app, for example here: https://use.operating.app/settings/import-data

When you’re done editing the file – using your tool of choice – before you upload it, doublecheck to see how it looks using a plain-text editor. The encoding may have been broken in the last export.

Frequently encountered errors

files have commas (,) or semicolons (;) in them and they are not wrapped in “quotes”
“quotes” are created using funny characters
lines have differing number of columns - some cells are missing
some numbers are 0.5 and others 1,5
dates are 2024/11/21 or 2024/21/11 rather than 2024-11-21
personID for the same person changes from one import to another, creating duplicates
- make sure you’re using unique unchanging identifiers for the person

Review what you’ve imported

The best way to see what the time entries contained – per person, per day – is the Utilization Metrics report. Hover over the days to see time entries:

Download the Data Import Excel

You can access the data import spreadsheet behind this link (Gsheet, view only). Please make a copy of the spreadsheet, so you can use it for your own purposes.

The “Other data” tab

Currently in invite-only use (as of December 2025)

With this power-user tool, it’s possible to populate a huge amount of data in Operating. However, in order to avoid duplicates and data loss, you must be careful to do things in the correct order and make sure to use the same external id’s for different things.

Ping us at support@operating.app if you need access.

Advanced import tricks

If you’re reading this, you’ve most likely been vetted by team Operating to have sufficient spreadsheet skills and technical understanding of the Operating data model.

The “Other data” import feature is behind a feature flag – this means it has to be separately enabled for you before you can access it in https://use.operating.app/settings/import-data

Following the instructions in this document may feel odd or repetitive. It’s because some of the initial imports have to be done in a specific sequence so that the mapping between clients, people, projects, allocations and time entries remain accurate. For some things, the best way to proceed is to do a little bit of old-fashioned manual work.

Populate an Operating tenant from scratch

The Operating team provides you with a data import spreadsheet.

Ask support@operating.app to create a new blank tenant (account).
1. If you’ve already tested Operating in a sandbox and want to keep it for testing purposes, ask us to rename the old tenant “yourcompany-test”.

You should follow this order to avoid errors with data references:

Organizational data like sites and roles. Add groups and seniority levels in the app itself.
People (and related data)
1. Make sure you persist the Person id’s (from your source system, or if you don’t have anything, something likely unique to the person, such as email address)
Skills (Optional)
Client and project tags (Optional)
Clients and projects
1. Make sure you persist the Client id’s (from your source system, or if you don’t have anything, something likely unique to the customer company, such as client name)
2. Make sure you persist the Project id’s (from your source system, or if you don’t have anything, something likely unique to the project)
  1. If you would like to use the external deal ID’s (from your CRM) as external project ID’s, follow the instructions here.
3. Remember the additional value mapping for each column where e.g. billing type values needs to be mapped (e.g. fixed price equals fixed-price)
Project allocations
1. Here, you will use the Person and Project id’s you introduced in steps 2 and 5.
(Optional) Time tracking data with tasks
1. Here, you will use the Person and Project id’s you introduced in steps 2 and 5.
2. Remember to use TaskID for each Task, otherwise the import will succeed but time entries will not have Tasks related to them

Use CRM deal ID’s as external project IDs

Scenario: you’ve connected your CRM (e.g. HubSpot) to Operating and now have plenty of projects in there. The projects have been added by the CRM integration and the best identifier for each of the projects is the CRM Deal ID – assuming that only one Deal corresponds to each Project.

Export all of your projects in https://use.operating.app/projects → the “…” button on top right → Export as CSV. The columns you will need are

Project ID
Client name
Project name
Project number (the rolling numbering Operating does automatically (1,2,3…)
Deal External IDs

The resulting CSV file will look like this (likely much longer):

Project ID,Client name,Project Name,Project Number,Deal External IDs
9444,Ford,Test Deal,13,250563001572

In the above file you can probably spot that Test Deal has the external ID present.

Now, go to the Other data tab in Manual data import and choose upload Clients and Projects.

In the upload, the only columns that matter are Project name and the Deal External ID as the Project ID. Mapping will look like this, and the dropdown menu will auto-suggest the right project assuming that all project names are unique. If you have lots of projects with the same name for different clients, bring the client name along in the export to avoid confusion.

This is what a Test Deal looks like afterwards – two connections, one from HubSpot, another from CSV.

With this, the Test Deal’s external project ID will be the same as the external deal ID. This may help you map things like project allocations to the right project.

Data Import CSV Field & Value Cheat Sheet

Allocations	Allocation ID	input	yes	WE-123	Unique ID of the allocation.
	Person ID	input	yes	PERSON-123	References a Person ID from the People CSV.
	Project ID	input	yes	PROJ-123	References a Project ID from the Clients and Projects CSV.
	From Date	input	yes	2024-01-01	Start date of the allocation.
	Through Date	input	yes	2024-12-31	End date of the allocation.
	Allocation Percentage	input	no	100	Value between 0 and 100. Use either this or Allocation Minutes.
	Allocation Minutes	input	no	2400	Average weekly minutes. Use either this or Allocation Percentage.
	Competence Role ID	input	no	ROLE-123	References a Competence Role ID.
	Competence Role Seniority ID	input	no	SENIORITY-123	References a Competence Role Seniority ID.
	Note	input	no	Project allocation note	Free-text note for the allocation.

Clients & Projects	Project ID	input	yes	PROJ-123	Unique project ID.
	Project Name	input	yes	Project 1	Name of the project.
	Client ID	input	no	CLIENT-123	Required if project has a client.
	Client Name	input	no	Client Company Ltd	Required if project has a client.
	Status	select	no	Confirmed	Tentative or Confirmed. Defaults to Confirmed.
	Project Owner	input	no	John Doe	Creates person if not existing. Can be mapped later.
	Secondary Owner	input	no	Jane Smith	Creates person if not existing.
	Client Owner	input	no	John Doe	Creates person if not existing.
	Description	input	no	Project description	Description of the project.
	Start Date	input	no	2024-01-01	Project start date (YYYY-MM-DD).
	End Date	input	no	2024-12-31	Project end date (YYYY-MM-DD).
	Client Tags	input	no	tag1,tag2	Comma-separated client tags.
	Project Tags	input	no	tag1,tag2	Comma-separated project tags.
	Groups	input	no	group1,group2	Comma-separated groups.
	Site	input	no	Main Office	Site name.
	Budget	input	no	10000	Project budget.
	Currency	input	no	USD	Required if budget is set.
	Billing Type	select	no	Time & Materials	Required if budget is set.

Client Tags	Tag ID	input	yes	TAG-123	Unique tag ID.
	Tag Name	input	yes	Important Client	Name of the tag.
	Description	input	no	Description	Optional description.

Competence Roles	ID	input	yes	ROLE-123	Unique competence role ID.
	Name	input	yes	Senior Developer	Name of the competence role.

People	Person ID	input	yes	PERSON-123	Unique person ID.
	Name	input	yes	John Smith	Full name.
	Title	input	no	Senior Developer	Job title.
	Email	input	no	john@company.com	Email address.
	Reports To ID	input	no	PERSON-123	Manager’s Person ID.
	Is External	select	no	No	Yes or No.
	Employment From Date	input	no	2024-01-01	Start date.
	Employment Through Date	input	no	2024-12-31	End date.
	Primary Competence Role	input	no	Developer	Primary role name.
	Primary Competence Role Seniority	input	no	Senior	Seniority name.
	Site	input	no	Main Office	Site name.
	Groups	input	no	group1,group2	Comma-separated groups.
	Additional Competence Roles	input	no	role1,role2	Comma-separated roles.

Assigned Skills	Assignment ID	input	yes	SKILL-ASSIGN-123	Unique assignment ID.
	Person ID	input	yes	PERSON-123	References Person ID.
	Skill ID	input	yes	SKILL-123	References Skill ID.

Project Tags	Tag ID	input	yes	TAG-123	Unique tag ID.
	Tag Name	input	yes	Important Project	Name of the tag.
	Description	input	no	Description	Optional description.

Sites	Site ID	input	yes	SITE-123	Unique site ID.
	Site Name	input	yes	Main Office	Site name.
	Weekly Working Minutes	input	no	2400	Default is 2400.

Skills	Skill ID	input	yes	SKILL-123	Unique skill ID.
	Skill Name	input	yes	JavaScript	Name of the skill.
	Skill Category ID	input	no	CAT-123	References Skill Category ID.

Skill Categories	Category ID	input	yes	CAT-123	Unique category ID.
	Category Name	input	yes	Programming Languages	Name of the category.

Time Entries	Person ID	input	yes	PERSON-123	Person who worked.
	Person Name	input	yes	John Smith	Name of the person.
	Project ID	input	yes	PROJ-123	Project ID.
	Project Name	input	yes	Project X	Project name.
	Client ID	input	yes	CLIENT-123	Client ID.
	Client Name	input	yes	Client X	Client name.
	Date	input	yes	2024-01-01	Time entry date.
	Hours	input	yes	7.5	Duration in hours.
	Task ID	input	no	TASK-123	Task ID.
	Task Name	input	no	Task X	Task name.
	Billable	checkbox	no	true	Sets billability. Task overrides if provided.
	Description	input	no	Working on feature X	Time entry description.

If the problems persist and you’ve lost hope, please send us the file (or the first few lines of it) to support@operating.app – thanks!