The in-app import tool brings over Contact records — names, emails, and phone numbers — from a spreadsheet export of your previous system. It always previews before writing anything, and it's safe to run more than once.
Before you start
Venue Admin or Super Admin.
Importing Contacts
Go to AdminVenuesImport.
Click Choose file and select a
.csv,.tsv, or Excel export of your Contacts.Map columns — match each column in your file to a field: First name, Last name, Email, Phone, Street, City, State, ZIP, an external Contact ID, an external Account ID, or a do-not-email flag. Any column you don't need can be set to — Ignore this column —.
Review the Preview — it shows how many rows will be created, how many will merge into existing patrons, how many will be skipped, and flags any warnings or duplicate ids within the file itself.
Click Import [N] patron(s) and watch the progress bar to completion.
Every imported patron keeps its external system id on the Details tab, so re-running the same import later updates existing records instead of duplicating them.
After a big import, open AdminVenuesPatronsDuplicates and click Recompute candidates — imports don't trigger duplicate detection automatically.
What this page does not do
This importer only handles Contact records. It does not bring over historical ticket orders, gifts, pledges, or households — those are a one-time migration Noctern support runs for you, not something staff self-serve from this page. There's also no custom-field mapping option in the column-mapper today; custom field values from a previous system need Noctern support to map as part of that same migration.
Once history is migrated, imported orders and gifts are clearly labeled as imported and are never counted as Noctern revenue — they're display-only history so nobody mistakes them for a live Noctern sale when reconciling numbers.
Watch out
Column mapping matters more than it looks — an email column mapped to the wrong field can quietly create duplicate patrons instead of merging into existing ones. Always check the Preview counts before confirming.
- Open the demo venue's Import page and step through Choose file → Map columns → Preview without actually importing anything.
- Note which fields are available in the column mapper, and which aren't (there's no custom-field option).