Cleaning a customer list for Housecall Pro means checking relationships, not just blank cells and repeated names. Every record has to answer four questions. Who is this customer, where does the work happen, who receives the updates, and who pays the bill?
A file can be formatted perfectly and still answer all four questions wrong. A tenant, a landlord, and a property manager can share one office number, so stripping repeated numbers removes records your dispatcher needs while the real duplicates stay put. Settling those questions in a spreadsheet takes minutes. Settling them inside the account afterward means merges you cannot undo and records your team is already working from.
Everything below happens before you click Import customers.
Ways to Add Customers to Housecall Pro
Your starting point depends on where your customer information is stored. Housecall Pro offers four ways to bring it into your account:
- Import a CSV file: Upload a customer list exported from your previous software or spreadsheet.
- Import from QuickBooks: Use QuickBooks Online or Desktop when it holds your most current customer data.
- Import contacts: Add customers from Google Contacts or your iPhone or Android address book.
- Add customers manually: Create individual profiles when you have no list to import.
These customer import options determine how the records reach Housecall Pro. Before using your chosen method, check the information you are bringing over. For a file import, work on a copy of the export. For QuickBooks or contacts, review the source records first. If you are adding customers manually, use the same identity and billing checks as you create each profile.
Start With One Reliable Customer List
Pick the authoritative list
Start with the system your team actually keeps current. Accounting software often holds accurate billing names while an older CRM holds newer service contacts. Choose the main source, then fix the gaps inside your working file before the transfer rather than planning a second import.
If another system holds your historical data, connecting QuickBooks afterward is a separate decision from importing customers, and it is covered further down.
Preserve the original export
Keep an untouched copy and clean a separate version. Record the export date and the system it came from.
If staff keep editing customer records while you prepare, agree on a cutoff and track changes made after it. An accurate export goes stale quickly once nobody is watching the source system.
Check whether Housecall Pro already holds customers added manually, through online booking, or through an earlier attempt. Those records belong in your duplicate review too.
Review Duplicates Before Removing Them
Compare more than names
Use spreadsheet filters or conditional formatting to flag possible matches. Compare original customer IDs, names, companies, contact details, and properties before deciding whether rows represent one customer.
A matching name is a reason to investigate. So is a shared phone number. Neither alone establishes that two records should become one.
Consider these hypothetical situations:
| Apparent duplicate | What to check |
| Two customers with the same name | Different addresses, IDs, and contact details |
| Household members sharing a mobile number | Whether they are separate service or billing contacts |
| Several properties sharing an office email | Whether the email belongs to a property manager |
| One customer under two spellings | Whether the remaining details establish the same identity |
Resolve conflicting details
For genuine duplicates, choose the current information and keep useful context from both records. If you cannot establish which phone number or address is correct, flag the record for review rather than guessing.
Keep a short change log showing which source records were combined and why. If job history is migrated separately, make sure the consolidation is reflected in its customer references.
Housecall Pro’s duplicate-management tool groups potential matches using names, phone numbers, and emails. It requires review, and completed merges cannot be undone. If a merged profile includes a customer marked “Do not service,” the resulting customer retains that status.
Separate Customers, Properties, and Payers
The wizard asks at Import Options whether you have customers that bill to another customer. Answer that from a worksheet you built beforehand, not from memory.
Identify each person’s role
Before reorganizing a complicated account, answer three questions: Who coordinates the visit? Where does the technician go? Who receives the bill?
Those answers determine whether you need multiple addresses or separate linked customers.
| Your arrangement | Structure to consider |
| One customer receives communications and bills for several properties | One customer with multiple addresses |
| The service contact differs from the party being billed | Separate customer profiles with parent-child billing |
For example, a business owner managing three locations through one contact may fit the first arrangement. A tenant coordinating access while a landlord pays may fit the second.
Housecall Pro documents that sub customers receive automated job notifications while the parent receives invoices, estimates, and receipts. That split is the whole reason to use the structure, so check it against how each account actually wants to be contacted.
Plan relationships before upload
Create a separate worksheet for complicated accounts: source customer ID, service contact, property, billing party, and intended relationship. Keep it as a reference during setup and verification.
For file imports, Housecall Pro’s guidance says nested child customers need their own rows, with sub-customer relationships established afterward. Do not assume the hierarchy in your old system will transfer automatically.
Check Customer Identity and Contact Details
Review the field requirements
Use the published requirements as your preparation checklist, then review the mapping and validation results in your account.
| Field | Published file-import guidance |
| Customer ID | Unique, up to 191 characters; display name used if absent |
| Display name | Required, with a fallback to first/last or full name |
| Identity details | At least one of name, company, or email |
| Phone fields | 10 or 11 digits |
| Multiple emails and tags | Comma-separated |
| Service and billing addresses | Optional; guide specifies real US ZIP codes and full state names or two-letter codes |
| Lead source | One per customer |
| Customer type | homeowner, owner, or business |
| Notification and contractor flags | true/false, yes/no, or t/f |
These address rules describe the published US requirements; confirm the appropriate format with support for records outside that scope.
Preserve IDs and display names
Keep original customer identifiers available for reconciliation. Watch for spreadsheet changes that strip leading zeros or convert long identifiers into another format. Preserve leading zeros in ZIP codes too.
Check whether the display name should identify a person or a company. Housecall Pro uses the display name on invoices, so an old nickname or internal account label deserves review.
Verify contact ownership
A phone number can have the right number of digits and still belong to a former tenant. An email can look valid while reaching an employee who left the customer’s company.
Confirm which contact details remain current, particularly for accounts with shared office numbers or multiple email recipients. Housecall Pro requires a cell number in the Mobile phone field for text notifications. It also documents that multiple customer emails can receive invoices and estimates automatically. Review recipients before carrying every historical email forward.
Leave unknown optional values blank rather than filling them with invented phone numbers or placeholder emails. Put unresolved records on a review list.
Clean Addresses and Preserve Context
Check the actual service location
Review street addresses, apartment or suite numbers, and properties whose ownership or occupancy has changed.
A missing unit number may not look serious in a spreadsheet, but it can leave a technician without enough information to identify the correct location. Likewise, a billing office address should not replace the property where work takes place.
Ask someone familiar with dispatch to review unusual addresses and accounts with several locations.
Keep notes understandable
Separate information that applies to the customer from instructions tied to one property or visit.
For a hypothetical multi-property account, “Use side entrance at the warehouse” needs a location label. Without one, an otherwise useful note becomes ambiguous.
Where an old column has no suitable destination, decide whether its content belongs in a labeled note, an appropriate tag, or a separate retained record. Housecall Pro’s preparation guide recommends notes or tags for information without a listed import field. Mapping information this way preserves context; it does not turn notes into a structured reporting field.
Standardize tags and lead sources
Agree on a small vocabulary before importing. For example, if “Commercial,” “commercial account,” and “COMM” mean the same thing in your business, choose one label.
Keep customer categories separate from acquisition sources. A customer being commercial does not explain whether they found you through a referral or another channel.
Preserve known lead sources and leave unknown attribution unresolved. Do not assign a convenient source just to make the column complete. Also keep customer-level attribution distinct from sources associated with individual historical jobs.
Preserve preferences and restrictions
Review notification preferences instead of enabling them across the entire list. Do not treat a notification flag as proof that a customer agreed to marketing.
Keep a separate record of service restrictions and confirm how they will be established in Housecall Pro. Recording “Do not service” in a note is not a substitute for checking the actual customer status after migration.
Review QuickBooks Imports Separately
Confirm your import route
A spreadsheet import and a QuickBooks integration follow different rules, so settle the route before you prepare a final file or restructure accounts.
Check the plan first. QuickBooks sync is not available on Basic. The app details page at My Apps shows a Housecall Pro Plan card listing Basic as Not Available with Essentials and MAX as Available, and that card is the fastest way to confirm gating for yourself. A Basic account planning a QuickBooks route is planning a file import instead.
While you are in that area, do not confuse the integration with the Accounting item under Money. That is a paid bookkeeping service, not the QuickBooks sync.
Check deeper customer levels
Housecall Pro’s QuickBooks Online guidance supports parent customers and second-level sub-customers. Third-level customers and deeper levels, including associated invoices, are excluded from that import.
Involve your accounting owner and Housecall Pro support before restructuring accounts. Do not delete invoices or payments simply to make a customer hierarchy fit. Agree on how historical records will remain accessible.
Use the QuickBooks Online onboarding guide for that route. If you use QuickBooks Desktop, check its separate guidance rather than applying Online rules.
Review Mapping Before Submission
Inspect every destination
In the import wizard, review where each important source column will land. Similar column names do not always mean the same thing.
Pay particular attention to company versus contact name, mobile versus work phone, service versus billing address, and customer notes versus information about an individual job.
Housecall Pro warns that unmapped columns are discarded during import. Resolve important unmatched columns before submission.
Check meaning after validation
Use the Invalid view to investigate flagged records, then read through the valid records as well. Validation catches supported formatting problems. It cannot tell you that a row describes the landlord when your office thinks it describes the tenant.
Inspect the exported file itself after spreadsheet editing. Confirm that commas inside notes or multi-value fields have not pushed content into neighboring columns, and avoid blindly splitting full names, which often contain several words.
Customer cleanup also does not replace a migration plan for historical jobs, payments, equipment, or price book items. The price book is a separate import entirely, handled under Settings, Price Book, which accepts a CSV or Excel file of up to 10,000 items and offers a downloadable template. Keep those separate requirements visible so nobody assumes one import covered everything.
Verify the Imported Customers
Reconcile the results
Wait until the transfer finishes, then compare the result with your approved source list before using imported records.
Account for intentional exclusions and combined duplicates. Do not expect the original export’s row count to equal the final customer count if you deliberately changed its structure.
Check representative profiles, then inspect every account on your exceptions list. Prioritize customers with multiple properties, separate payers, several email recipients, or important service instructions.
Check the daily workflow
Ask whether staff can identify the correct property, reach the appropriate contact, and select the intended billing party. Confirm names, notes, preferences, and relationships against your preparation worksheet.
For incorrect file imports, Housecall Pro advises contacting Chat Support instead of independently deleting and reimporting. Support can assist with reversing the initial import and planning a correction.
Your Final Pre-Import Checklist
Before submitting, confirm:
- One authoritative import source has been selected.
- An untouched original export is retained.
- Existing Housecall Pro customers have been considered.
- Suspected duplicates and conflicting details have been reviewed.
- Original IDs and intended display names are preserved.
- Contact details and email recipients are current.
- Service locations and billing parties are distinguished.
- Parent-child relationships have a setup plan.
- Notes, categories, preferences, and restrictions have been reviewed.
- Important columns have suitable destinations.
- Unresolved records have an assigned reviewer.
- Someone owns the post-import verification.
Hold records with unresolved identity or billing questions for review. A smaller, understood batch gives your team a clearer starting point than a larger list containing decisions nobody has made.
Common Questions
Can I import a customer without an email address?
Yes, in most cases. The published file import chart allows identity through a name, company, or email, so email is not universally mandatory. Review the remaining requirements and the validation results, and never invent an email to fill a gap.
Should customers sharing a phone number be merged?
Only when your review establishes that they are the same customer. Shared household lines and property management numbers routinely belong to separate records, and a completed merge in Housecall Pro cannot be undone.
How should I handle a customer with multiple properties?
Use multiple addresses on one customer when that customer receives both the communications and the bills. Use parent and child billing when the service contact and the payer are different parties, because sub customers receive job notifications while the parent receives invoices, estimates, and receipts.
Can I import from a CSV file and from QuickBooks?
No. Housecall Pro limits customer import to one source, and the wizard states this on screen. Pick whichever system is most up to date and reconcile the rest in your working file beforehand.
Will parent and child relationships transfer automatically?
It depends on the route. File import guidance calls for separate rows with the relationships established afterward. QuickBooks Online supports parent customers and second-level sub customers, and excludes third-level and deeper along with their invoices.
Why are my customers not receiving text messages after a clean import?
Usually because the account has no texting number yet. Housecall Pro requires you to register your business before any customer text sends, and until that finishes the Text toggles under Settings, Notifications do nothing, regardless of how clean your mobile phone column is. Text messaging also requires a paid plan rather than a trial.
Do I need a particular plan to use the QuickBooks route?
Yes. QuickBooks sync is available on Essentials and MAX and is not available on Basic. Check the Housecall Pro Plan card on the app details page before you build your migration plan around it.