Importing team cards with our CSV importer

If you're rolling businesscards.io out to a team of more than a handful of people, creating each card by hand is a chore. The CSV importer lets you upload a spreadsheet of your colleagues, generate cards for everyone in one go, and (optionally) invite them to claim their cards. It's available on the Team plan and above.

Before you start

You need to be a team owner. The importer lives at Settings → Card Imports, or directly at businesscards.io/card_imports.

Step by step

1. Open a new import. Click New Import. You'll see preferences for how cards should be configured. These apply to every card in the import.
2. Set defaults for the batch. Pick a theme, default colors, which fields are required for the contact form, whether to collect contacts at all, and so on. You can override these per card later.
3. Download the CSV template. On the next screen, click Download Template. It's pre-populated with all the columns we support, so you don't have to guess.
4. Fill in the template. One row per person. First name, last name, and email are required. Everything else is optional — leave columns blank if you don't have the data. Every column is explained in the reference table below.
5. Upload your CSV. Drag the file in or click to browse. You can also upload a folder of primary images (headshots) and a folder of secondary images (work logos) and match them to rows by filename.
6. Review. The importer parses the file and shows you a preview of every card it's about to create. Look for red rows (errors) and fix them in your CSV before continuing.
7. Process the import. Click Process. Cards are created in the background. The page refreshes as cards come through, and you'll see them appear with their public URLs.
8. Invite people (optional). When the import is finished, click Invite All to send each person an email with a link to claim their card. They'll create an account (or sign in, if they already have one) and the card moves into their dashboard.

What each CSV column means

The template contains every column below. Columns ending in 1 or 2 let you add up to two entries of the same kind (for example a work and a personal email).

Column	Required?	What it is
First name / Last name	Yes	The card holder's name, shown at the top of the card.
User email address	Yes	The address that receives the invitation to claim the card. It becomes the person's login.
Prefix / Suffix	No	Name decorations such as "Dr." or "PhD".
Pronouns	No	Shown next to the name, e.g. "she/her".
Headline	No	A one-line description shown under the name.
Note	No	Short free-form text shown on the card, e.g. "Tap to save my contact."
Company name 1 / 2, Company title 1 / 2	No	Employer and job title. Use the second pair for a second role.
Email type 1 / 2, Email address 1 / 2, Email icon 1 / 2	No	Email addresses shown on the card. Type is "work", "home", etc.; icon controls the symbol shown next to it.
Phone type 1 / 2, Telephone number 1 / 2, Phone icon 1 / 2	No	Phone numbers shown on the card, same pattern as emails.
Address type 1, P.O. box 1, Street address lines, City 1, State/Region 1, Zip code 1, Country 1	No	A postal address for the card.
Video title, Video URL, Video description	No	A YouTube or Vimeo video embedded on the card.
Custom slug	No	The card's URL, e.g. businesscards.io/c/jane-doe. Left blank, a random slug is generated.

Updating existing cards via CSV

If you've already imported a batch and you want to bulk-update them (say, the office moved and everyone's address needs to change), you can upload a new CSV against the same import. Match on email and the importer will update existing cards rather than create new ones.

Common gotchas

• Save your CSV as UTF-8. Excel sometimes saves as Windows-1252, which mangles accented characters.
• If you're matching photos by filename, use the same filename in your CSV's photo column (e.g. jane-doe.jpg) and in the uploaded folder.
• The importer enforces your plan's card and user limits. If 200 rows would put you over the limit, the rows beyond the limit won't be processed.
• You can delete the entire import (and every card it created) from the import detail page if you need to start over.