# Moving from spreadsheets

> How a club that keeps its members in spreadsheets moves to Sports Club OS: tidy the list, import it, link families, and start from there.

Who this is for: Anyone with “Add and change members” or “See members and contacts” (by default: Administrator, Head Coach, Casual Staff, Reporting).
Last checked in release 2026.10.23, on 23 October 2026.
Source: https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/from-a-spreadsheet/

A club that keeps its members in a spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets, or a mailing list) brings them in with **Import CSV** on the Members page. The import brings the people and their memberships; the club then links families, and starts invoices, bookings and email in Sports Club OS from that day.

## Before you start

- You need to be able to add and change members. The Administrator, the Head Coach and Casual Staff can by default.
- Set up the membership types first, with the names you will use in the spreadsheet: [Set up membership types and fees](https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/membership-types/index.md).
- Keep a copy of the spreadsheets as they are. Past payments and history stay there: Sports Club OS starts the club's records from the day you go live.

## Tidy the list

Put everyone into one sheet, one row a person, with these columns in the first row: `First name`, `Last name`, `Email`, `Phone`, `Member no`, `Membership type`, `Status`, `Joined`, `Expiry`, `DOB`, `Address`, `Suburb`, `State`, `Postcode` and `Tags`. Leave out any you do not have. The whole list of headings Sports Club OS reads is in [Bring in your members from a spreadsheet or another system](https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/import-members/index.md).

Then:

1. **One row for each person.** A family of four is four rows. Children with no email of their own can have none, or share a parent's.
2. **Remove duplicates.** Sort by surname and by email and look for the same person twice. The import skips a row that repeats an earlier one only when the member number is the same, or the email and both names are, so a person entered twice with different spellings comes in twice.
3. **Use the club's type names** in `Membership type`, exactly as on Settings. A row with a type the club does not have comes in as a contact with no membership.
4. **Write dates as day/month/year with four-digit years** (31/07/2027), or year-month-day (2027-07-31).
5. **Give each person's status**: Active, Lapsed, Suspended or Cancelled. A blank status is taken as Active.
6. **Put tags in one column**, separated by `;` (Pennant;Volunteer). Add the club's tags on Settings, **Tags & fields**, first.
7. **Save it as CSV** (in Excel: **File**, **Save As**, **CSV UTF-8**). A file can hold up to 20,000 rows.

## Import it

Open Club > Members > Members & contacts, press **Import CSV** and choose the file. Sports Club OS says how many rows are new and how many people are already there, and imports only the new ones when you press **Import**. Importing the same file again adds nobody twice. The steps are in [Bring in your members from a spreadsheet or another system](https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/import-members/index.md).

## After the import

- **Link each family.** Open each family member, and on their **Family** tab search for the person who pays (the primary member) and choose how they are related. The person who pays then sees and pays for everyone linked to them. See [Households: who pays for whom](https://sportsclubos.net/help/members/households/index.md).
- **Check expiry dates** of anyone due to renew soon.
- **Money owed now.** For anyone who owes the club money on the day you go live, raise an invoice for it on Club > Invoices > All invoices, so it shows as owing in Sports Club OS.
- **Email.** Members' choices about email from your old mailing list do not come across. Each member is asked what they want to be emailed about the first time they sign in, and the club chooses, for each optional message, whether to include people not yet asked. See [Set up email categories and how members choose them](https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/email/index.md).

## Next

[Give people logins and roles](https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/users-and-roles/index.md), then [Before you go live: a checklist](https://sportsclubos.net/help/setup/go-live/index.md).