Importing bills

You can start using Scoro without importing any historical data. However, if you want to compare your previous years' results, it is possible to import already received bills. There are many more fields than you can import, but we recommend keeping it simple. If possible, stick to importing the total amount of the bill without specifying the exact services/products purchased. Add detailed information about individual products/services bought only if it’s really necessary to get detailed reporting on the service level. 

It is also possible to update already existing bills (purchase invoices). The safest way to do that is to first export the existing bills, modify the needed fields, and then import them again (selecting the Update already existing items option in the import window). 

TIPS FOR PREPARING THE IMPORT FILE

• Download the example file and follow its structure. You can find the example file by going to the Import/Export module and selecting the relevant import page (Bills).
  
  Alternatively, you can create one bill to Scoro and export it to understand exactly what columns need to be filled out. This is the recommended way as there may be several columns in the example file that are not relevant to your business. 
• Mandatory fields that need to be filled out before the import: 
  • Document number – number of the bill. Only numbers can be used (not letters).
  • Due date (doc_deadline) – the expected payment date of the bill.
    • Possible date formats:
      dd.mm.yyyy
      dd-mm-yyyy
      yyyy/mm/dd
      yyyy-mm-dd (recommended format)
      mm/dd/yyyy
  • Supplier – the company or person who issued the bill. If the contact already exists in Scoro, the document is automatically linked to the relevant contact. If the contact does not exist in Scoro, a new company is created during the import.
  • Currency – make sure to use the correct 3-letter combination (e.g. EUR, USD, GBP), when adding a currency. The list of currencies is available under Settings > Sales and finance > Currencies. Enable all currencies you use before importing bills.  
  • Quantity (amount) – how many units were bought.
  • Unit price (price) – price per one unit without tax (and before discount).
  • Tax rate code (vat_code) or tax rate percentage (line_vat_percent) of the bill (or individual service/product). Only one of them is needed. We advise using tax codes (you may use multiple codes for the same percentage, e.g. 0% for Tax Except, 0% for Sales Tax on Import). Make sure you have entered your tax rates to Scoro (and the tax codes in Scoro match the ones in the import file) before importing bills. If there are several tax rates on one bill (e.g. one product is bought with a 20% tax rate and another one with 0%), make sure to first enable line-based tax rates in Scoro. 
• If you wish to import a bill with all line items, each product/service line on the bill should be added to a separate line in the .xls file. On each line, keep the general information about each bill as it is (e.g. document number, document date, etc.) and modify only product/service-specific information.
  Make sure that the information on one bill is entered into the consecutive lines (e.g. the first two lines are about the first bill, the next four lines about the second bill, and so forth), do not mix the lines of different documents.
  Bill 123 contains 2 line items (2 hours of Analysis and 3 hours of Consultancy). The total sum is €100 (50*2) for Analysis and €120 (40*3) for Consultancy. 
  
• If you are interested only in the total sum of the bill (and the specific services bought are not that important), just add one row about each bill to the import file, specifying the bill number, price, and other mandatory fields. This is the recommended (simpler) option. Note that there is no need to add information about product name, code, or group.
  If we take a look at the same example, the bill could have been imported also this way (quantity equals 1, unit price equals total sum (€220) of the bill before tax and discount): 
  

In addition to the mandatory fields there are other generic fields that might be helpful: 

• Recognition date – to indicate under which date the cost should be allocated in the reports (e.g. the issue date might be July 5, but the bill is actually issued for the services provided in May, therefore the recognition date could be set as May 31).
• Project name – if the bill should be linked to a project, make sure you first create/import the relevant project to Scoro. The project name in Scoro and in the bill import file must match in order for the bill to be linked with the correct project.
• Contact person – if you wish to define the supplier-side contact person for the bill, fill out this field (add the first and last name of the contact). If this contact already exists in Scoro, the bill is automatically linked to that person. If the contact does not exist in Scoro, a new contact is created during the import.
• Owner name – an employee from your company who is the author of the bill. This employee must already have a user account in Scoro. Add your employee’s first and last name to the owner_name column (exactly like written on their Scoro user profile). If it is not important to define the author, you can just ignore the column. In that case, the person who did the import will be added as the author.
• Discount – the overall document discount in percentages. E.g. add the number 10 if you want to indicate that you received a 10% discount. Note! The discount sum is subtracted from the unit price (the calculation is made during the import in Scoro; there is no need to define the discount sum in the import file, just the percentage).
• Is chargeable – indicates if the bill is chargeable to the client or not. Fill out the field with '1' if the bill is chargeable to the client, add a '0' if not.  

Detailed information to add only if you are interested in importing all the line items:

• Product group, product code, product name – if you have predefined products in Scoro and they all have unique names, you can fill out the product name field only (and delete the other two). Scoro automatically adds the product group and code to the bill. If the products in different product groups happen to have the same name, make sure to specify the product group for all products in the file. If you haven’t predefined products in Scoro, you might want to do that first (or add products during the bill import. See the section above for more information).
• Line comment (product or service description) – is used to add details about a specific service.
• Unit – unit name in the import file must match the unit name in Scoro. You can check the list of predefined units or add new units to Scoro under Settings > Sales and finance > Units.
• Accounting object – to import accounting objects, first enable them in Scoro. You can, but don’t have to predefine accounting objects in Scoro. If the accounting object does not exist in Scoro, it is automatically created during the import.
• Line discount percent – if you wish to use line-based discounts, first enable them in Scoro under Settings > Sales and finance > Discounts. If you want to indicate that you received a 10% discount on a particular service, add the number 10 to the line_discount_percent field. Note! The discount sum is subtracted from the unit price (the calculation is made during the import in Scoro, there is no need to define the discount sum in the import file, just the percentage).

TIPS FOR IMPORTING THE FILE TO SCORO

After you have prepared the file, import it to Scoro, map the fields, and decide whether you want to update the existing bills and add new products/services during the import or not.

• Mapping phase:
  Map the columns you filled out in the .xls file to the fields in Scoro. If you have used the column headers from the template file, most fields are mapped automatically.
  
  
• Adding new products/services to the product database during bill import:
  If you are only interested in the total sum of the bill, there is no need to add any products/services to Scoro during the import (simply deselect the option Add new products).
  
  If you are interested in importing line items (product/service lines), it is possible to add new products/services to Scoro during the bill import. In that case, if a product described in the import file is not found in Scoro, it is automatically created during the import (product name, product group, product code, and description will be added to your product database). For that, select the option Add new products.
  
  However, the recommended option is to first import/add the products and services to Scoro and then import the bills. That way, you can add a lot more information to Scoro about products/services than with the bill import. In that case, deselect the option to add new products. Also, make sure that the product names in Scoro match the ones used in the bill import file.
  
  
• Update an existing bill or add a new bill:
  If you are importing new bills (the very first import) just deselect the option Update already existing items. It is also possible to update the bills already entered to Scoro. Just make sure the bill number or bill ID in the import file matches the document number in Scoro (you can see the bill ID by exporting bills) and select the update option.
  
  
• Resolving errors:
  Scoro will notify you once the import is complete. The lines containing errors are not imported, plus you get an error report indicating the issues. Just download the file, make the needed corrections in the file, and import it again.