Switch from Spreadsheets to a WordPress CRM: Step-by-Step

Running your contacts in a spreadsheet works until it doesn’t. The moment you have multiple people updating the same file, or you need to track deal stages and follow-up dates, a spreadsheet starts working against you. Moving to a proper CRM doesn’t have to be complicated, and if your site is on WordPress, you can keep everything in one place.

This guide walks through the full process of going from a spreadsheet to a WordPress CRM, including how to clean up your data before importing it.

What You’re Actually Moving

Before you do anything, spend 15 minutes understanding what’s in your spreadsheet. Most spreadsheet CRMs have some combination of:

• Contact information: name, email, phone, company
• Status or stage: something like “Lead”, “Proposal Sent”, “Customer”
• Notes or comments in free-text columns
• Dates: last contacted, follow-up date, signed date
• Custom columns that made sense at the time but are now inconsistently filled in

All of this can move to a CRM. The question is which columns are worth bringing and which ones have served their purpose.

Step 1: Decide What to Keep

Not every column in your spreadsheet deserves a field in your CRM. Go through your columns and classify each one:

• Keep and map: Fields you actively use and that have a place in a CRM (name, email, phone, company, status)
• Keep as custom field: Data you use but that doesn’t have a standard CRM equivalent (a “budget tier” column, a “referral source” column, a “contract value” column)
• Convert to notes: Free-text columns with comments, conversation summaries, or one-off information that doesn’t need its own field
• Drop: Columns that are outdated, incomplete, or were never really useful

This decision process usually cuts your column count by 30 to 50 percent. That’s fine. A simpler contact record that your team actually maintains is better than a bloated one they ignore.

Step 2: Clean Your Data

Spreadsheet data tends to be messier than data from a formal CRM. Common issues:

Inconsistent Formatting

Phone numbers might be in five different formats. Email addresses might have trailing spaces or capitalization inconsistencies. Status values might be spelled differently across rows (“customer”, “Customer”, “CLIENT”).

Fix this before importing. In Google Sheets or Excel, use find-and-replace to standardize values. Use the TRIM function to remove leading and trailing spaces. Use LOWER or PROPER to standardize text case.

Duplicate Rows

In Google Sheets: Data > Data Cleanup > Remove Duplicates. In Excel: Data > Remove Duplicates. Run this on the Email column specifically, since that’s the field a CRM uses to identify unique contacts.

Missing Emails

A CRM needs an email address to function properly. Contacts with no email address are harder to manage. Decide whether to include them as-is or to exclude them from the initial import and add them manually later.

Old or Irrelevant Records

People you contacted five years ago and never heard back from, test rows, placeholder data — delete it. A fresh start is the point.

For a systematic approach to data cleaning, see the guide on CRM data cleaning before migration.

Step 3: Convert Notes Columns

If you have a “Notes” column or multiple comment columns, prepare them for import as contact notes rather than field data.

One approach is to combine multiple text columns into a single notes column before importing:

In Google Sheets, you can concatenate columns:

=A2&" | "&B2&" | "&C2

This merges multiple comment or note fields into a single text string that can be imported as a contact note. It’s not elegant, but it preserves the information.

Step 4: Structure Your CSV for Import

Save your spreadsheet as a CSV file. Before you do, make sure:

• Row 1 contains column headers, not data
• Header names are clear and consistent
• No merged cells anywhere in the sheet
• No blank rows in the middle of the data
• The file is saved with UTF-8 encoding (this matters for names with accented characters)

In Google Sheets: File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv)

In Excel: File > Save As > CSV UTF-8

For more detail on getting your CSV ready for import, see the WordPress CRM CSV import guide.

Step 5: Set Up Your WordPress CRM

Before importing, configure your CRM to match your data. In SkunkCRM:

1. Install and activate SkunkCRM from your WordPress plugin directory
2. Go to SkunkCRM > Settings > Contact Fields
3. Create custom fields for any columns that don’t map to standard fields (budget tier, contract value, referral source, and so on)
4. Set up your pipeline stages to match the statuses you used in your spreadsheet

Getting the CRM configured before import means your data has somewhere to land. Custom fields that don’t exist yet will be ignored or cause errors during import.

Step 6: Run the Import

1. Go to SkunkCRM > Contacts > Import
2. Upload your CSV file
3. Map each column header to the corresponding CRM field
4. Preview the first few rows to confirm the mapping is correct
5. Run the import

The import tool will return a report showing how many contacts were created, how many failed, and why. Review failures before moving on.

Step 7: Set Up the Processes You Were Missing

The real win from moving off a spreadsheet isn’t just having the same data in a better place. It’s gaining the processes a CRM enables:

• Automatic capture of new contacts from your WordPress forms
• Pipeline views to see where every deal stands
• Follow-up reminders and task tracking
• Filtering and segmenting your contacts without formulas
• Activity logging so you have a record of what happened with each contact

Spend a few hours configuring these after your data is in. The time saved on manual spreadsheet management will pay back quickly.

What to Do with the Old Spreadsheet

Don’t delete it immediately. Keep it as a reference for at least 30 days after the migration. If a contact is missing or a field didn’t import as expected, the original spreadsheet is your fallback.

After 30 days, if everything looks correct in your CRM, archive the spreadsheet somewhere you can find it if you ever need it, and stop maintaining it as a source of truth.

The full migration process, including how to handle more complex CRM-to-CRM migrations, is covered in the guide on migrating to a WordPress CRM without losing data. SkunkCRM makes this process straightforward for WordPress users: learn more at skunkcrm.com.