Past Perfect software...best practices for conversion to eTapestry

Hi Megan!



Have you purchased a conversion for eTapestry?  If so, you may want to connect with the conversion programmer and see what works for them.



If you are just going to import the data in on your own, I find it is best to import data in stages.  First, import all your constituents.  Second, import their transactions.  Third, import their contacts.  So on and so on.  



The reason for this is I’m sure some donors have more than one donation.  You have to keep in mind when importing gifts, the system is looking at each gift entry as a separate line of data.  So John Smith might be listed five times in your import file, but eTapestry doesn’t know that one guy named John Smith gave five times.  It thinks here are five separate gifts that need to go into five separate John Smith accounts.



By importing the accounts first, John Smith would have an account ready to go in eTap.  Then when you import the donations, you would have to set Keys on step 2 of the import process. We recommend using Name, Address, and Email as keys, but really the eTapestry Account Number is the best Key you can use.



If you mark Name, Address, and Email as keys then the import tool will know to check those fields in your import file against the accounts in eTapestry.  If it matches on all three fields, then it considers the account in eTap a possible duplicate of the account in your import file.  So on step 4 of the import process you can choose how to handle that.



In the John Smith example, he may have had five donations in the import file, so really he should match five separate times to the same account already in eTap.  Then you can just choose to merge his donations in to the account instead of creating five separate accounts.



Every account in eTapestry has an Account Number.  So it is always best to have a column in your import file for Account Number and list the account number next to each row.  If you use Account Number as a Key, it knows exactly which account to merge data into.  But of course you’d have to have every account already in eTapestry to do that.



We have a great walkthrough tool on how to import accounts and another on how to import donations.  It can be found here.



Importing contacts and notes is basically the same process as importing donations.  You just use different required fields.  For example a Note has to have a Date and a Note.  A Contact has to have a Date, Subject, and Contact Method.



Hope this helps!