Skip to content

Import your families from a spreadsheet

Importing needs your church's Owner or a volunteer with Manage people access. If you don't have Manage people access, ask the Owner to turn it on.

To import families, go to People, press Import families, and upload a CSV. Hey Burrow matches your columns, then shows a review of every row before anything is saved.

Before you start

Use one row per child. For siblings, repeat the trusted person on each row, so two children in one family means two rows with the same adult.

Press Download a sample file for a CSV with the right headers and a worked sibling example. Filling that in is faster than fixing a file afterwards.

Create your rooms first. The Room column matches on the room's name, and a name that doesn't exist yet is an error on every row that uses it. See Create and edit a room.

Steps to import

  1. Go to People and press Import families.
  2. Drag your file in or press to pick it.
  3. Press Continue.
  4. On Match your columns, check that each column points at the right field. Change any that don't with the dropdown, or set it to Don't import.
  5. Press Preview import.
  6. On Review import, check the dates, because 06/05/2025 is read according to your church's country. Problem rows are listed with their issues.
  7. Press Import followed by the row count, for example Import 42 rows.

If your file has separate first and last name columns

On Match your columns, switch How are names written? from One name column to First and last name columns.

Rows with errors are skipped

The import saves the good rows and skips the bad ones. The confirmation says how many were skipped and then disappears, so make a note of the count.

Important

Skipped rows aren't kept anywhere. To get them in, fix them in your spreadsheet, remove the rows that already imported so only the fixed ones are left, then upload that as a second file.

If most of the file is failing, press Upload a different file on the review screen, fix the source and start again.

Important

Hey Burrow doesn't check for duplicates, so importing the same file twice gives you two of every child. Check People before you re-run an import you're unsure about.

Troubleshooting

  • A row says Room 'Kindy' wasn't found. That room doesn't exist yet, or the name doesn't match exactly. Create it, or correct the spelling in the file.
  • You can't find the row an error refers to. Row 2 is the first family, because the header counts as row 1.
  • Dates came in wrong. Numeric dates follow your church's country, so 06/05/2025 is 6 May at an Australian church and June 5 at an American one. Review import shows what it read for each row. See CSV import: column reference and common errors.
  • Your file is very large. The limit is 1,000 rows, so split it and run the import more than once.

Related articles

Still stuck? Email us and tell us what you were trying to do.