CSV Import

Moving from another system or a spreadsheet? Smart Import reads your export, works out which columns are which, and shows you everything before anything is created. Importing never emails anyone.

Rather not do it yourself? Choose We'll set it up for you on the setup page and we'll do the import with you, free of charge. Moving from Coacha? See Migrating from Coacha.

Where to find it

As a club admin, open Smart Import in either of these ways:

• Choose Import it myself on the setup page
• Click More in the sidebar, or press Ctrl+K(⌘K on a Mac), and pick Smart Import

The Import CSV button on the Athletes page opens the standard importer, which can also update athletes you already have. It takes up to 500 rows and 512 KB per file. The rest of this page is about Smart Import, which is the one to use for a club's first import.

Your file

• CSV or Excel (.xlsx or .xls). If your system exports another format, save it as CSV first.
• Up to 5 MB and 2,000 rows per file. For Excel, only the first sheet is read.
• You can drop several files at once, for example members in one and staff in another.
• Column names don't need to match anything. The AI handles variations like "DOB", "Date of Birth" and "Birthday", and recognises common exports such as Coacha's as they come.
• Download the template from the import page if you're building a spreadsheet from scratch.

What it brings across

• Athletes — name, date of birth, team and group (including athletes on more than one team), medical notes, emergency contact, photo consent, and whether they're active
• Parents and guardians — up to two per athlete, with name, email and phone
• Teams and groups — created from your team columns if they don't exist yet
• Staff and sessions, if your files include them

What it doesn't bring across:

• Addresses, membership numbers and custom fields
• Past payments and attendance history — Kolva starts a clean record from your first day
• Direct Debit mandates — parents set up a new Direct Debit with Kolva, and your old system keeps collecting until each one is live. See the GoCardless guide.

Importing

1. Upload your file (or files)
2. The AI analyses your columns, usually in 10–30 seconds
3. You see a summary of what it found: athletes, parents, teams, staff and sessions
4. If something is ambiguous, it asks you a quick question instead of guessing
5. Review every record. Untick anything you don't want to import.
6. Click Import N Records

When it finishes you get a reconciliation: how many were added, how many already existed, how many you didn't select and how many failed, with the reason. To bring in rows that failed, or that you left unticked, fix them in your original file and import it again: people already imported are skipped. Sessions aren't checked, so untick any sessions you've already imported. To correct details of athletes you've already imported, edit them on their profile or use the standard importer's update option.

People already in your club

• Parents are matched to existing accounts in your club by email, so siblings end up under one parent.
• A child is skipped if a child with the same name is already linked to the same parent email. A row with no contact email is skipped if a child with the same name and date of birth is already in your club.
• So re-running a corrected file skips the people it has already imported. It doesn't skip sessions, so untick the ones you've already imported.
• A child you added by hand under a different contact email isn't recognised. Look for them on the review screen and untick them, or they'll be added twice.

After the import: welcome emails

Importing never emails anyone. New parents and staff appear on your dashboard as "members not yet welcomed". When you're ready, for example once you've told families you're moving, click Review & send. Each person gets a one-time welcome email with a privacy notice and a link to set their own password. The link is valid for seven days. We never email passwords.

Once you've sent club welcomes from the dashboard, messaging someone who hasn't had theirs yet also sends them the club welcome, automatically.

Fees and billing

Teams created by an import have no fee, so nothing is billed. Billing starts when you set a team's monthly fee, and from then on everyone on that team is billed on your billing day. Athletes you import onto a team that already has a fee are billed from the next billing day. If you're moving mid-season, set fees once you're ready to collect through Kolva.