How importing works

If you already have your portfolio in a spreadsheet or spread across a notebook, you do not have to enter it loan by loan. Import it whole: loans, clients, payments and recurring services each have their own template.

The two rules that protect your migration

Importing does not touch your cash. It does not put money into or take it out of your cash drawer, does not require an open session, and imported payments generate no receipt and cannot be reversed.

Importing does not affect your client's credit history. It does not change their score or trust level. What does get recorded is that the loan exists (how many loans they have and how much they have borrowed in total), never how they paid before coming in.

Why it does not touch your cash

That money left your pocket before you started using Prestafolio, so adding it to today's cash would count it twice. Every loan you import goes straight into your books with an opening entry for the principal still owed, without passing through cash and without requiring any open cash session. See Disbursement and accounting.

Why it does not affect the credit bureau

A client's trust level is built from payments observed inside the platform (see Trust and the bureau). As far as that shared bureau goes, a loan imported with months of arrears comes in with zero days of arrears: the clock starts running from when you brought it in, not from the old date on your sheet. An imported payment history does not score either, for the same reason: it is history, not observed behaviour. In your own account it is different: the loan comes in with its real arrears, the overdue installment shows up in your delinquency list from day one, and your own arrears keep running normally; the only thing that does not count is the bureau other lenders see.

A loan comes in already in progress

You are not just importing the client's name and the original amount: you tell Prestafolio where the loan stands today (how many installments were paid, or how much is still owed) and the balance is right from day one. A loan on installment 5 of 12 comes in owing exactly the remaining 7, with its next collection date where it belongs.

Clients: linked, never updated

If the client already exists in your account, the import recognises them by their ID document and links the new loan, record or payment to that client, instead of creating a duplicate. Identity is compared normalised, so "001-1234567-8" and "00112345678" match as the same person.

An existing client is never updated on import. That keeps an old sheet from overwriting the phone number or address you already corrected by hand. If you need to fix a detail for someone you already brought in, edit it directly inside Prestafolio: re-importing the same data will not change it.

Re-importing is safe

Uploading the same file twice duplicates nothing: whatever is already recorded is recognised, by your own code, or if you do not provide one by borrower plus amount plus date; for payments, by loan plus installment number. If you gave two identical loans to the same client on the same day, give each its own code or the second will be taken as a repeat. You can fix a mapping calmly and re-upload the whole file as many times as you need.

What you can import

Exact format of each template (columns, required fields, aliases): Import template format.

Who can import

The account owner can always import anything. An invited agent needs the import permission for that entity (loans, clients, payments or services, depending on what they are bringing in): without it, they do not even see the importer. That permission is added to the entity's creation permission, not a replacement for it.

How it works

1. Download the template for whatever entity you are bringing in.
2. Fill it in with your portfolio, in your usual currency (never in cents). Maximum 200 rows per file: if your portfolio is bigger, split it into several, each batch is independent and re-uploading duplicates nothing.
3. Upload it. Before anything is written you get a row-by-row preview, with how many new clients would be created and any row with a problem.
4. Review it and confirm. Only then does anything get written to your account.

Plan limits

Your plan's limits are checked against the whole batch before confirming. For loans and services, if the batch does not fit entirely it is rejected entirely: it never imports "whatever fits", because half a portfolio in and half out is worse than none. The client list does let in whatever fits, because it does not move any balance. Payments have no plan cap: a payment does not take up its own slot, it takes up the slot of the loan it belongs to. See Your plan's limits.

FAQ

Do I need an open cash session to import? No, never.

What happens if I upload the same file twice by mistake? Nothing gets duplicated: the second time everything is recognised as already existing and skipped.

Can I use importing to fix a client's phone number? No. Importing only creates what does not exist yet; it never updates a record you already have. Fix it inside Prestafolio instead.

Does importing lower a client's score because of old arrears in my sheet? No. That arrears never happened inside Prestafolio, so it is not counted. See Trust and the bureau.