Moving in from other rental software or a spreadsheet

How it works

1. Export from your old system. Most rental software exports products, customers and orders as CSV or Excel, usually under Export, Reports or Settings. A spreadsheet you keep yourself works as it is.
2. Drop every file at once on Settings → Data. CSV, tab-separated text, Excel (.xlsx) and JSON are read. A workbook with several sheets becomes one card per sheet. Nothing leaves your browser at this point.
3. Check each card. It says what it thinks the file is and how many of its columns it recognised. Open Columns to change which column means what, Preview to see the first few records, and the problem list to see any row it will not bring across, and why.
4. Press Import. Inventory goes in first, then customers, suppliers and bookings, so a booking can find the items and the customer it names. Each card ends with how many were added, how many were already here and a link to look at them.

What it can bring across

Column headings are matched by meaning rather than by one exact spelling, so “Qty”, “Stock count” and “Quantity on hand” all land in the same place. The file or sheet name helps too: a file called customers.csv is read as customers. These are the fields each kind can fill:

• Inventory — Name, SKU, Category, Zone or shelf, Unit, Quantity owned, Rental price, Replacement price, Cost price, Description, Notes, Reorder point, Turnaround days, Damaged, In maintenance, Missing, Retired.
• Customers — Name, Company, First name, Last name, Contact person, Customer type, Email, Phone, Address, Address line 2, Town or city, Postcode, Notes.
• Vendors — Name, Email, Phone, Notes.
• Bookings — Order number, Booking name, Customer, Customer email, Customer phone, Out date, Due back, Event date, Status, Item, Item SKU, Quantity, Guests, Notes.

A file exported from Settings → Data in another RentWeave workspace imports straight back in.

What counts as already here

• An item with the same SKU, or the same name when the file has no SKU. An item without a SKU is given one.
• A customer with the same email, or the same name and phone number. If two records of the same person still get through, merge them.
• A supplier with the same name.
• A booking for the same customer, with the same name and the same dates.

Bookings

Only bookings that are still to come are imported. One returned last month is history, and its stock is already back on the shelf; bringing it across would only make the numbers wrong. Rows sharing an order number become one booking with several lines.

• Each line has to name an item that is in RentWeave by then — import your inventory in the same go. A line naming an item it cannot find is listed as a problem.
• A customer the booking names but RentWeave does not have yet is added, if you are allowed to add customers.
• Availability is checked exactly as it is for a booking typed in. If stock is short for those dates, the booking is skipped — unless you are allowed to override availability, in which case it is saved as over-booked with a note saying it was already promised in your old system, and appears on the conflicts page.
• A quote, option or enquiry comes in as tentative; a confirmed or reserved order as confirmed, if you are allowed to confirm bookings. Anything cancelled is left out.
• A date like 03/04/2026 can mean either of two days. RentWeave looks through the whole file for a day above 12 to settle it. If nothing does, it reads them in your date format and the card lets you switch.

Your old system’s order number is kept in the booking’s notes, and the booking gets a RentWeave reference of its own.

Who can import what

Importing is adding, so each kind needs the same permission as adding one by hand, and the card says so if you do not have it. Prices and cost prices need the finance permissions that set them; a new category needs permission to manage categories. No plan limits how many items you bring in. See settings, staff and roles.