Switching from Excel or other software
Move customers, suppliers, products, opening balances and open items into OpenBusinessERP with the CSV/XLSX import wizard. Templates included.
Not legal or tax advice. This page summarises public rules and describes what the software does. It does not replace advice from your tax adviser. The linked official sources, in their current version, are what counts.
The import wizard under Import data reads CSV and Excel files and maps the columns itself, also when they are called “Firma”, “PLZ” or “Kundennummer”. There are ready-made mappings for exports from lexoffice and sevDesk.
Templates
These templates are the same files the application offers under Import data: UTF-8 with BOM, semicolon-separated, one example row.
| Target | Required | Optional | Template |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customers | Name | Customer number, email, VAT ID, phone, website, street, postcode, city, country (ISO-2), payment terms (days), currency, notes | import-customers.csv |
| Suppliers | Name | Supplier number and the same fields as customers | import-suppliers.csv |
| Products and services | SKU, name | Description, type (goods/service/consumable), unit, sales price, purchase cost, currency, tax code, barcode/EAN | import-items.csv |
| Opening balances | Account code | Account name, debit, credit, or balance (+debit / −credit) | import-opening_balances.csv |
| Open customer invoices | Invoice number, customer name, document date, gross amount | Customer number, due date, net, tax, amount paid, currency | import-open_invoices.csv |
| Open supplier bills | Bill number, supplier name, document date, gross amount | Supplier number, due date, net, tax, amount paid, currency | import-open_bills.csv |
Order
- customers and suppliers,
- products and services,
- opening balances at the cut-over date,
- open customer invoices and supplier bills.
Open invoices refer to customers and suppliers by name or number, so master data comes first.
Step by step
- Upload. Choose a target, for example Customers, and upload the file.
- Map columns. The program suggests a mapping. Check it; a mapping can be saved as a preset.
- Validate. A dry run shows each row as new, update, skip or error. For contacts you choose whether existing entries are updated or skipped.
- Import. Only now is anything written.
- Check. Compare counts, open-item totals and balances with the source.
Files and formats
- CSV separated by semicolon, comma, tab or pipe; the separator is detected.
- UTF-8 (with or without BOM) or Windows-1252, as older Excel versions write it.
- Excel as XLSX or XLSM.
- At most 20,000 rows per file. Split larger data sets.
- The templates use German number and date formats such as 1.000,00 and 31.01.2026.
Undo
A completed import can be undone. That removes the records this import created. Existing entries it updated are not rolled back to their old values, so read the dry run before letting it update existing contacts.
The cut-over date
Pick a clear cut-over date, ideally the start of a month or year. The old system books until then, OpenBusinessERP from then on. You carry over balances and open items, not past individual postings. Keep the old data in the old system or as an export for as long as the retention periods under § 147 AO run. Agree the opening balances with your accountant; see also DATEV export and SAF-T.
After that, the setup wizard walks through company details, tax, bank and the first invoice. Installation is described on the install page.
Sources
- OpenBusinessERP: import targets and column names in the source
- OpenBusinessERP: CSV and XLSX parsing in the source
- § 147 AO, retention of records, including legacy data (German)