# Data import

Flow Retail provides powerful and flexible tools for importing data, making it easy to set up and manage your system via spreadsheets.

You can import everything from products — including variants such as sizes, colors, and other attributes — to prices, purchase costs, and inventory levels.

In addition, customer data, product groups, brands, and suppliers can all be imported.

## Supported data to be imported

<table><thead><tr><th width="196.98046875">Data</th><th>Fields</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Products</td><td>All + Properties</td></tr><tr><td>Brands</td><td>Name</td></tr><tr><td>Product Groups</td><td>Name + hierarchy structure</td></tr><tr><td>Inventory</td><td>Quantity + cost price</td></tr><tr><td>Price lists</td><td>Prices</td></tr><tr><td>Suppliers</td><td>Name</td></tr><tr><td>Supplier prices</td><td>Prices</td></tr><tr><td>Customers</td><td>Name, type of customer</td></tr></tbody></table>

{% hint style="info" %}
We do NOT support importing historical sales. The main reason for this is that this type of data can have a very complex setup and relation to other fields, and so quickly becomes a very extensive task, seldom worth all the efforts and time.

When switching from another POS system over to Flow Retail, we recommend to use the old system for lookup over a time-limited period of 6-12 months, and to get a full export of all the historical data 5-10 years back in time, mainly for legal reasons.

Note that it is always the customer's responsibility to keep their receipt in terms of guarantee, etc.&#x20;
{% endhint %}

## Getting started

**All import files must in the XLSX file format, the modern Excel file standard.**

XLSX is widely used, highly flexible, and supported by virtually all spreadsheet tools — including Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice, and OpenOffice.

### Define your templates

When importing data, you first need to create a **template** where you define/"map" the columns from the spreadsheet to the corresponding fields in Flow Retail.

The available fields are different depending on the type of template you are defining. So, for the product template there are basically 50+ fields to choose from, while on the stock template there are just a handful.

<figure><img src="/files/5iwl9mKymZ11WT2TLd22" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

{% hint style="info" %}
You can have as many templates as you want within each type of data, and so you can for example have one template for each specific supplier, if they give you different spreadsheets with their data, and you want to use their spreadsheet as-is, typically for PRICAT files.
{% endhint %}


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.flowretail.com/docs/day-to-day-operations/data-import.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.