Plenty of exports are not one thing. A single file can carry a person, their address, their giving history and their recurring plan all on the same row. Importing it as People throws away the gifts. Importing it as Giving throws away the profile.
Smart Import reads the file, works out every module it fits, and lands it across all of them in one pass, with the person resolved once and shared.
Running It
- Go to Imports → New Import and choose Smart Import.
- Upload your file. Studio reads the headers and proposes the modules it thinks are in there, with the strong matches recommended.
- Tick the modules you want. You can turn off anything you would rather bring in separately.
- Check the mapping for each module in turn. Every module gets its own mapping screen, because the same column can mean different things: a name is the donor on the giving side and the person on the people side.
- Run it.
Why the Linking Is the Point
The person on each row is resolved once and reused for every module on that row. So the gift, the recurring plan and the note all attach to the same record, in one pass, with no second import and no matching by name afterwards. That is the part that is hard to reproduce by splitting the file up yourself.
A ZIP of Several Files
If your old system exports a folder rather than a file, upload the ZIP. Studio pulls out every CSV inside, works out what each one is, and walks you through mapping them one at a time. Church Office and similar bundle exports work this way.
When Not to Use It
- Your file is plainly one thing. A directory export is a People import, and the single-module path is simpler.
- You want to import in stages and check each one before the next. That is a good instinct on a big migration, and the module imports are built for it.
Reverting
One revert undoes the whole run, across every module it filled. Gifts, recurring plans and the people it newly created all come back out together, so you are never left with half a migration.