Importing orders

Handshake allows you to import your important order history, whether it be from another Handshake account or from your pre-Handshaking days. No matter what the platform was, Handshake can ingest CSV (preferred) or excel documents with the relevant order data. Additionally, order imports can be set up for Auto Imports like most other content types from the bulk import/export page.

Common Use Cases

• You are transitioning to Handshake from a previous order management system and you want to bring over all your older order data
• While using Handshake, maybe you are also have other means for taking orders like direct calls to your back office. These orders can be formatted and imported to be added to the mix
• You want to update order statuses of existing orders already in Handshake to accurately represent the most up to date information for sales reps in the field
• You work with another company also using Handshake and you need to import orders in to your system that they've exported and sent your way.

The order importer can be found on the bulk import/export page from within your account. Click the button towards the bottom of the page that says 'Advanced Options' to reveal this:

Supported File Types

Like all our other bulk import tools, the file you are trying to import must be an Excel (XLS or XLSX) or CSV file.

Prerequisites

Although not required, we recommend your items, images, and customers are already set up in Handshake. This will ensure that your imported orders properly link up to you existing customers and products. Order imports can optionally create new customers as part of the import, but your customer files are likely to have more details about your customers, which is why we recommend running that import first. Similarly, order import will accept items that are not in your current catalog, but the item details will only be available if you load your products file first.

The Initial Warning

The Field Mapping Screen

Let's take a deeper look at the different sections of the field mapping screen... 

Required Fields

The following fields are required in the order import file:

• Status - Handshake has five different order statuses that this field can me potentially mapped to: Open, Hold for Confirm, Confirmed, Processing, and Complete.
• Customer ID: The ID of the customer corresponding to the given order
• SKU: item SKU of each item in the order
• Quantity: Quantity of each item purchased with the order
• Unit Price: Price of each item purchased with the order
• Order ID: At least one of these needs to be mapped upon the import. Your Order ID refers what was used previous to Handshake. Handshake Order ID should only mapped if the file includes orders originating from the same Handshake account you are now importing in to. Common use cases for this are if you want to import a batch of orders at once and flip the order status en mass. This will allow for an update/replace of the order data rather than creating duplicate orders.
  
  

Optional Fields

Let's take a look at the different sections available and highlight fields that may require a bit more explanation. If you have any additional questions, please email our customer support team. 

Order Details

These are generally pieces of information that refer to the order as a whole, including the category this specific order should belong to, the date the order was written, and notes pertaining to the order as a whole. Worth mentioning:

• Order Category (name or ID) If matched to an existing order category in Handshake, the order will fall under that category in Handshake. If not matched, we'll create a new category.
• Order Total (will not import) - this will not import because the order total will be calculated based on the SKU and pricing in the Handshake catalog.
  
  

Order Status

Referring to shipment status and the ship date.

• Start Ship Date - The defined date by which the order will ship.
• Cancel Date - The defined date by which the order should be canceled if not shipped.
• Ship Status - Available options are Shipped, Not Shipped, Shipped Partial, or Unshipped.
  
  

Customer

The customer and corresponding contact info for the customer that the imported orders should be tied to. If looking to add new customer data, refer to the section at the bottom of the page. 
 

BillTo / ShipTo

If the address provided with the order is found on an existing customer record, it will be matched and used. If the address used on the order is not matched to any existing addresses on the customer record, we can optionally create the new address for that customer. Refer to the section at the bottom of the page about adding this data.

Items

• Item Name/Item Description - These will not import because the name and description data will be pulled from the latest item catalog that exists in Handshake by matching the SKU.

Please Note: If a SKU on the order you are importing is currently inactive in Handshake, it will still appear normally on the imported order. If a SKU on the order you are importing does not exist anywhere within your Handshake, the order will still import but there will be a section that notes "Items Not in Current Catalog", and the item will appear on the order as: "Unknown item 'SKUXXX' "

Promos & Discounts

Any promo code, detail, percentage discount or total dollar amount discount applied to the order.
  

Warehouse

You can provide the warehouse name, warehouse ID, or both. If matched, the warehouse in Handshake will be used. We will try to match to an existing warehouse in Handshake first by ID, then by name. If either of these match to an existing warehouse in Handshake, the matching warehouse will be used for the imported order. If neither the warehouse ID or the warehouse name match to an existing warehouses in your Handshake account, we can optionally create a new warehouse as part of the order import.

Should Sync

In addition to importing your order history, you can choose whether or not these orders sync out to your mobile devices. Depending on the volume of order history you are importing, syncing down to a an iPad or iPhone could affect app performance. Because of this, we recommend that you do not sync more than 3 months of order data to your mobile devices. Again, feel free to IMPORT as much of your order history as you like in to Handshake, just make sure not to set 'Should Sync' for more than 3 months worth of that history to your mobile devices.

Now that we got that out of the way, you are probably asking "How do I tell Handshake what SHOULD sync and what SHOULD NOT sync?"

In the spreadsheet (XLS, XLSX or CSV) you are importing, have a column with the header: Should Sync
For the orders you want to sync to devices, set this column to "true"
For the orders you don't want to sync to devices, leave the field blank or set to "false"

If you don't want ANY of your orders to sync, you can omit this column from the spreadsheet all together.

A Note About New Data