Partner Import (CSV)

If you need to add many partners at once, you can import them from a CSV file. A short wizard walks you through choosing a partner type, uploading and mapping your file, and reviewing before you import — then shows you exactly which rows were created, failed or skipped.

Where to find it: Go to Partners and click Import (top right, next to Add partner).

Who can use this: Team members with the Admin or Partnerships role.

Before you start

Your CSV file must be 10 MB or smaller and contain no more than 5,000 rows.
The first row should be column headers (for example Company Name, Contact Email, Tier).
Every partner needs a company name and at least one contact email. Rows without these will not be imported.
You will choose one column that uniquely identifies each partner (a Partner ID, a UUID, or the Company Name). Rows that share the same value in this column are grouped into a single partner, with their contacts combined.
If you use a connected CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Attio, Zoho or Rolldog), you can map a column holding each partner's CRM record ID so it is saved on the new partner.
If you are importing resellers, you can include a distributor column to link resellers to your existing distribution partners in bulk. See Distribution Management.

Step 1: Select type

Choose the partner type for this import: Referral Partners, Reseller Partners or Distributor Partners. Every partner in this import is created as the type you pick, so if you need different types, run a separate import for each.

Step 2: Upload and map

Upload your CSV file. Journeybee reads your column headers and tries to match them to the right fields automatically. For each field you can accept the suggested column, choose a different column, or leave it unmapped.

Before you can continue, you must map three things: a Unique Partner Column, Company Name, and Contact Email.

Fields you can map

Partner fields: Company Name, Domain Name (for example acme.com), Tier, Category, Stage, and Tags.
Contact fields: Contact Email, First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, and Contact Tags.
Custom fields: only those that apply to the selected partner type, plus shared fields available to all types. See Custom Fields.
CRM record IDs: shown only for the CRMs you have connected, with a field for the partner record and one for the contact record.
Distributor: shown for reseller imports only, matched to your existing distribution partners.

Partner tags and contact tags are mapped separately — make sure each tag column is mapped to the right one. Tiers and categories are covered in Categories & Tiers, and tags in Tags.

Create missing values automatically

On this step you will also see the option Automatically create missing tags, custom field values, categories, and tiers. When it is turned on (the default), any tiers, categories, tags, stages or select-field options in your file that do not yet exist in Journeybee are created for you. Turn it off if you would rather review new values manually — in that case, any values that do not already exist are left blank on the imported partners.

Step 3: Review and import

You will see a summary of the import type, total partners and total contacts, plus a preview of the first 3 partners so you can check the mapping looks right. If anything looks wrong, go back and fix it.

This step also has the option Create Live Partnerships and send invitation emails to new partner contacts:

Turn it on to create each partner as a live partnership and email their contacts an invitation.
Leave it off (the default) to create partners as offline partnerships, with no invitation emails sent.

When you are happy, click Start Import. The import runs in the background — you will see a live progress bar and can close the pop-up if you like; the import keeps running. When it finishes, a results screen shows how many partners were created, failed and skipped, with a per-row breakdown you can search, filter and download as a CSV.

Troubleshooting

The Next button is greyed out

To continue past the mapping step, you must map a Unique Partner Column, Company Name and Contact Email, and resolve any validation errors shown in red. The most common validation error is contacts grouped under one partner having different email domains — all contacts for a single partner must share the same domain.

Some rows were skipped

A row is skipped when its company name is blank (or no name column was mapped). Check your file for empty name cells before importing. Skipped rows are listed on the results screen and in the downloadable CSV.

Some partners failed

A partner fails (rather than being created) when it has no valid contact email, when a contact's email address is invalid, or when its mapped domain is a free/public email domain such as gmail.com. Open the results breakdown to see the reason for each failed row, fix your file, and re-import just those rows.

Distributors were not linked

Distributor linking applies to reseller imports only. Each distributor value must match the email domain or name of an existing distribution partner. If a value does not match, the reseller is still imported — it just is not linked to a distributor. Add the missing distribution partners first, then re-import.

Duplicate partners appeared

Importing does not match against or update your existing partners — every imported row creates a new partnership, even if a partner with the same name or CRM ID already exists. Within a single file, rows that share the same value in your Unique Partner Column are merged into one partner. To avoid duplicates, check that the partners in your file are not already in Journeybee before importing.

Good to know

Custom fields that do not apply to the selected partner type are filtered out automatically — only partner-type-specific fields and shared fields (available to all types) are imported.
A CRM record ID is saved on the new partner but is not used to find or update existing records.
Large imports take longer: 500–999 partners can take 5–10 minutes, and 1,000 or more can take 10–15 minutes. For the most reliable results, split very large imports into batches of around 500.
For step-by-step instructions on creating a single partner, see Creating a Partner. To manage partners after importing, see Partner Management and Partner Contacts.