How to Bulk Import / Upload Your Assets Into AssetFrog

6 min read

We knew the import feature would be the most important and crucial module of AssetFrog. It is the tool that empowers you to easily make changes to your assets in bulk.

If you’ve just signed up to AssetFrog – the asset import feature can also help you move from your previous method of recording your assets. You can bring your pre-existing spreadsheets and use AssetFrog’s import mapping to map your spreadsheet columns to AssetFrog fields.

We’ve spent a lot of time and effort putting together a super fast and powerful asset import tool that can easily handle importing and updating 1000s of assets at a time.

When should you use the Asset Import feature?
How will I know if my import file is valid?
Step by step guide on uploading your import file
Need additional help?

When should you use the Asset Import feature?

The Asset Import feature is very useful when you want to update or create many assets at the same time.

Assume you have just purchased 100 brand new identical desks. Rather than creating 100 new assets using the barcode scanner, you can instead fill out the AssetFrog Upload Template spreadsheet and copy down 100 rows, making sure to give each desk a unique Asset Tag ID.

Just signed up to AssetFrog? You can use the Asset Import feature to migrate your old asset spreadsheet, either the one you’ve been using to keep a record of your assets, or an export from your old asset system. The AssetFrog import module will help you with the spreadsheet column to AssetFrog field mapping.

How will I know if my import file is valid?

We’ve created an extremely powerful import wizard and we are proud. The wizard will help you map your columns and will provide you with a very detailed error report if there are any invalid rows.

The error report will highlight each individual issue and provide a comment to help you fix the problem. You can even use the error report as the next import file! After you’ve fixed the issues in the error report simply save it as a CSV file and upload!

Step 1 – Finding the asset import feature

Please note: The screenshots in the guide below may look different than what you see in AssetFrog depending on updates – however the general process should be the same.

Finding the asset import feature is super simple. Visit the All Asset’s page and you’ll find the “Import Assets” button at the top right, as pictured below.

Step 2 – Downloading all assets report as a backup

You’ll now be greeted with the Asset Import wizard. There are 4 steps to the wizard – Backup, Upload, Mapping, Summary – more on those later. Right now we are on the Backup step.

If you read the paragraph on this screen, great work! In summary, it says that to maintain the super fast import speeds we’ve had to force AssetFrog to not record any import changes under the “History” tab of each asset.

Instead, before any import we ask that you download a backup of all your assets at the time of import. That way if anything goes wrong or you need to see how the assets were before the import, you will have the records available.

Bonus tip – you can import that “Backup” spreadsheet straight back into AssetFrog to essentially restore your assets to the point before importing.

On this step, you can also view a history of your past imports by clicking “View Import History”.

When ready, press “Download All Asset Backup To Proceed” and store that downloaded spreadsheet somewhere secure.

Step 3 – Downloading the import template and understanding AssetFrog field limits

You will now be on Step 2 – Upload. You will see the following screen, as always make sure to read the paragraph summary.

What’s most important to note in the paragraph summary:

If an imported Asset Tag ID matches one already in AssetFrog, it will update that existing asset rather than creating a new one
If an imported asset was going to be created but the plan limit was reached, it won’t create that asset
Good news – you will be able to download a detailed list of failed assets at step 4. Summary

Button – Download Import Template CSV

The import template spreadsheet will show you the fields which you can upload into AssetFrog. It includes all default fields + any custom fields you have created.

We have put in an example row (row 2) to show you what kind of data should be in each column, you can delete this row when you add your own data.

This import spreadsheet is meant as a quick guide. If you’re able to fill this out it means all fields will map automatically and you can skip the mapping process. If you’d prefer you could just upload any spreadsheet you have (CSV format) and map the columns inside AssetFrog (see Step 4 – Uploading your import file and field mapping).

Button – Download Field Limits

The AssetFrog field limit spreadsheet will show you all available fields for upload, the maximum amount of characters the program allows, an example column and any important notes about each field.

One thing to note is that date fields such as Purchase Date require a YYYY-MM-DD format which is a universal format used to ensure accurate dates are imported.

Step 4 – Uploading your import file and field mapping

If you used the import template we provide, all your fields should match automatically and be green. If you have uploaded your own version of a spreadsheet, you will need to map each AssetFrog field to your import file column.

The only required fields are Asset Tag ID and Description. Every other field can be left blank if you wish.

If you want to exclude a column, you may press the red cross next to each field under the “Your uploaded CSV” column.

Once you’ve mapped all the columns you wish to import and scroll down, you will see a dropdown “How do you want to handle existing assets?”. Choose “Update” if you’d like any matching assets to be updated, or “Ignore” if you’d like any matching assets to be ignored.

Assets are matched using the “Asset Tag ID” column.

Step 5 – Finalising import and understanding the outcome

If everything was successful during the import you will see the screen below.

All assets were successfully imported!

It will give you an overview of how many assets have been entered as “New”, and how many were “Updated”.

Step 6 – Downloading the error report and preparing it for re-upload

If there were some errors you will see the screen below. It will report how many assets were successfully imported, and how many were not imported due to an error.

As noted in the red text, you may download an errored rows report spreadsheet which will be available for 3 days before being deleted from the system.

Click on the “Download Errored Rows Report” button to download the spreadsheet of assets which failed to import.

Here is an example of an asset import error spreadsheet:

As you can see the “Site” column is highlighted in red and there is a comment attached to each cell that has an issue.

In this example, we can see that Head Office is not a site that we have set up in AssetFrog – the acceptable options are “The log”.

There are 2 ways to solve this import error:

We can add a new site to AssetFrog called “Head Office”
We can edit column D to have the site of “The log”

Once all the issues in the error spreadsheet are fixed, you can use the import feature to upload the error spreadsheet directly to AssetFrog. All columns will map automatically, and it’s as easy as a couple clicks.

Rinse and repeat this process until you’ve successfully imported all of your assets.