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Importing

You may find yourself needing to import data from external systems into CiviShares. For example you may have raised money using an external platform that you want to import into CiviShares (though you should also consider using CoShares or CiviContribute to do your fundraising).

Importing purchase transactions

In this case, you can use CiviCRM's standard import functionality to import Contacts to represent the shareholders and Contributions to represent their investment. You can then create Purchase transactions from the contributions.

The general process is outlined below. You can find detailed documentation on importing in CiviCRM here: https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/common-workflows/importing-data-into-civicrm/.

Step 1: Import contacts

You'll first need to ensure that the contacts are in CiviCRM. You can use CiviCRM's standard Import Contacts functionality if they are not already in the system.

Consider importing an external ID as part of this import. You can then use this to match up the Contributions in Step 2 below. Alternatively you could use their email email address or match them using the internal CiviCRM ID.

Note that if you investors are a mix of Individuals and Organisations you will need to import both types of investors separately.

Step 2: Import contributions

Import the investment amounts using CiviCRM's Import Contributions functionality. You'll need to ensure that they are linked up to the right Contact. Full coverage of importing contributions can be found here: https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/contributions/importing/.

Step 3: Create purchase transactions

Once the contributions are in CiviCRM, you can create Purchase transactions from them. See Purchase transactions for more information.

Importing detailed financial historical data

Importing detailed financial historical data can be an involved process with many steps depending on the format, complexity and cleanliness of the source data. We hope to make a simple UI for importing data into CiviShares soon. In the mean time, if you need to import lots of historical data, you'll need to write an import script. If writing such a script is outside of your comfort zone, you may wish to hire someone to do this for you.