Sage Accounting import errors: contacts and bank statements
Sage Accounting's CSV imports are strict about headings, column order and what a column may contain. A file that looks fine in a spreadsheet can still be refused.
Bank statement imports
Sage Accounting reads a bank statement CSV as either three columns (date, description, amount) or four (date, description, money in, money out). The usual failures are the wrong column order, a blank description, and separate Debit and Credit columns where a single signed Amount was expected. Opening and closing balance rows left in the data are read as transactions.
Check by hand: confirm the number of columns matches the form you are importing, keep one amount per row with money out as a negative number, and delete balance rows and report titles around the data.
Contacts imports
A contacts file needs the headings Sage expects, a name on every row, and values within the field lengths. A file over about half a megabyte may need splitting. Fields over their length may be truncated rather than rejected, which is the dangerous case: the import succeeds and a contact name is quietly cut short.
Why a spreadsheet makes it worse
- Numbers stored as text will not sum or sort, and amounts with currency symbols or thousands separators are not numbers to an importer.
- Dates read with the wrong locale swap day and month without any warning.
- Stray and non-breaking spaces stop values matching.
Sage changes its import templates from time to time, and several details could not be confirmed against a live Sage company when this add-on was built. Where that is so, Import Cleaner for Sage™ explains the problem and leaves your cells alone.
Check the file before you trust it
Import Cleaner for Sage™ scans a Sage export, or a sheet you are about to import, and explains every finding. The full scan, every explanation and Undo are free, and your data stays in your Google™ account.
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