Expenses

While users can be added individually, this becomes tedious for any more than a handful of people. RIPA Expenses has a CSV import feature that lets you add many users quickly. There may still be individual per-user additional setup needed later, but bulk import removes most of the hard work!

1. Visit the bulk import page

Administrators should use the navigation sidebar Administration --> Users menu:

...to see the user list. Now click on "Import users":

...and the bulk import form will be shown.

2. Check requirements

The CSV data you must send to RIPA is described by the import page, which tells you required CSV file headers in the first row, what the contents of each must be, and also lists optional headers.

• The CSV file lets you to assign teams to managers or reporters during import and those teams are unique to your particular setup.
• You should make sure that as many of your teams are created as possible first to take best advantage of this.
• Create teams without managers, reporters or employee users where needed, since the CSV file is then used to populate that information during import.

There is a series of links (highlighted in the screenshot below) which, when clicked on, open information panels that tell you about the data required in the relevant column (for example, it might list currently known team names). These sections are hidden initially because - once you've figured out your first CSV file - it gets a lot easier to import new users later based on earlier files, and it isn't helpful to have all the expanded sections cluttering up the form.

For example, if you clcked on "Valid role names..." it would expand to show something like this:

The exact information shown depends on a variety of factors including your subscription tier and system settings. In the above example, the role names shown might not be exactly the same as the ones you see elsewhere, due to language settings; but for CSV import, the names used in the CSV file must exactly match the items shown in the expanded help section. This applies to all such sections.

3. Banking integrations

If you have a subscription tier that supports bank transaction reconciliation and have enabled a banking integration, a third information section appears which describes another optional CSV column. Depending on which bank you use, you might see one of two things. The simplest case looks like this:

By including a column with heading "Bank", the CSV file can say whether or not a given employee has a corporate credit card that they can use for expenses, but that doesn't then associate any user with a particular bank account that would be identified through an inbound bank transaction data feed. You will have to edit users later to set up that association. Some bank integrations allow you to specify the bank account for the user within the CSV file to avoid this additional subsequent manual step, in which case you will see this:

You must know the bank account number for the corporate card associated with each user of interest to include the required information in the CSV file. Using the last few digits of the card number is also supported, but discouraged as these digits may not be unique across all users, leading to incorrect card allocation within RIPA Expenses. Only do this if you are very sure that the card number endings are unique.

4. Download the example CSV file

If this is the first CSV file you're trying to make, it might help to download an example file. This uses your company's team and role names, randomly chosen for a couple of example users. Between this and the rest of the information on the page, hopefully you should have a good idea of how to build your CSV file - but if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact RIPA Support for more help. 

5. Check options

Usually, you will want to add any users imported by CSV to existing users, but sometimes - especially first time around - you might notice a mistake and want to instead replace all users. The options near the top of the page cater for this:

The "Merge with existing users" option adds anything from your CSV file to your existing user collection - but further to that, it can be used to change things about existing users. If an e-mail address in the CSV file matches an existing user's account, then the user will be updated:

• Forename and surname will be changed to match the CSV file.
• Bank card information (if you have banking integrations enabled) is updated.
• Any new roles identified for the user are added to the their current role collection, but none are removed.
• Team membership, management or reporting changes also only add to whatever teams the user already had.
• If a banking integration is in use, bank information specified for a user will override whatever might have been previously specified. This might mean simply toggling whether or not they have a corporate card, or if the integration supports it, possibly changing the associated bank account for that user.

The "Replace existing users" option is dangerous and not usually used, but is there to get you out of trouble if (say) you perform a CSV import of users early on, but then discover that things haven't worked as expected and need a way to just start again. Note that:

• Existing users will be deleted before import and this cannot be undone.
• Any users who have already made expenses claims cannot be deleted, so if there are any such people, the behaviour for them will be as described above for the "Merge" option
• At least one administrator user must always be present. If multiple users have been given the Administrator role, all but one will be deleted and there is no guarantee of which will remain, so for a more predictable outcome, consider removing that role from all user accounts except your own if you want to be sure that your own account isn't amongst those replaced by the CSV import process!

Except for very unusual circumstances, you should always have the "Merge with existing users" option selected.

6. Create and upload your CSV file

You can now build your CSV file. Often this is done in a tool such as Microsoft Excel, starting from existing employee information in whatever HR system you use, manipulating that data within Excel to reach the desired arrangement required for bulk import then, finally, exporting from Excel in CSV format. Once the file is prepared, select it by clicking on "Choose File" towards the top of the import form, then click on "Upload CSV file".

7. Monitor progress of the import

CSV file import can take a while, so you'll now be taken to a page which tracks the progress of the job.

The progress bar will update automatically as the import progresses. There's always a chance that some problem is detected in your file and processing has to be halted. Information is given to try and help you resolve the problem. In the example below, a deliberately bad role called "Bad Role" was specified for a user on row 2 of the CSV file:

No changes are saved in RIPA Expenses if import errors arise. User additions, existing user alterations or user replacements are only "saved" if the whole file is processed successfully. You can make changes to fix a problematic CSV file, import it again, then if need be address any other errors that might arise, as many times as necessary. You will not end up with any "half created" users, or some employees becoming onboarded from an earlier, successful part of the CSV file, while other employees are still waiting.

To avoid potentially long lists of repetitious error information, CSV import stops as soon as any error is encountered and only this first error is shown. As a result, it's a good idea to always check other rows in your CSV file to make sure the same problem isn't repeated elsewhere.

When import succeeds, you'll see this:

Note the counter indicating how many users were added. This can also indicate (for "merges") how many existing users were updated using the CSV data.

You don't need to keep the task page open during long imports. You can get back to the full list of all tasks, including user import tasks, by using the sidebar navigation menu Administration --> Tasks:

This shows the tasks list, which contains a complete history of all tasks, successful or otherwise:

The list view includes smaller progress bars in the "Progress" column for any task which is currently running. The "eye" icon on the right of each row gets you to the task detail page.