Getting started

Bring your history in from another platform

3 minute read

If you have been selling somewhere else, your history can come with you. The Import page on your dashboard reads the export file you download from your current platform and turns it into real records in Broidry: past orders with their totals, the customers behind them, and product exports as draft listings. Your client book and your sales history are filled in from day one instead of starting empty.

Broidry recognizes the standard self-serve exports from Etsy, Shopify, Square, Squarespace, Wix, Big Cartel, and PayPal. If your history lives in a plain spreadsheet instead — or an export Broidry does not recognize — you can still import it: Broidry shows you the file's own columns and you point at which one holds the name, the item, the price, and the date. Only a name column is required.

The Import page with the drop-a-CSV zone and, below it, where to find each platform's export.

How it works

  1. 1In your current platform, download your order export. Every platform has its own export button in its settings, and the file it gives you is a plain spreadsheet. On Etsy: open Shop Manager, click Settings, then Options, then the Download Data tab. Under Orders, pick Orders as the type, pick the year (and a month, or leave the whole year), and press Download CSV. Do it once for each year of history you want. For your products, the same tab has a Download CSV button for Currently for sale listings.
  2. 2Open the Import page: on your Orders page, click "Import past orders" at the top (typing "import" into the search box at the top of any page and pressing Enter opens it too). Drop the file in.
  3. 3Broidry detects which platform the file came from and shows you a preview: exactly which orders, customers, or products will be created, and how many rows it skipped.
  4. 4Review the preview and apply it. Nothing is saved until you do. If the preview looks wrong, do not apply it.
Note: Imported past orders are marked as imported and come in with the status Done, so they build your history without landing on your production list. They do not count toward the free plan's 15 orders a month while they stay that way. To work on one again on the free plan, move it back to an earlier step on your Orders board first. That counts it as one of that month's orders. Until you do, Broidry will not email its quote, make or send a mockup for it, print its work sheet, open it at the machine, add a tracking number, or buy its shipping label. An order dated after today is left out of the import. Imported products arrive hidden, so you can review them and add photos before customers see them.

No file? Type them in instead

Plenty of shops keep their customers in a notebook, a phone, or a spreadsheet of their own, with no platform to export from. Open your Customers page and press "Add past customers". Put one person on each line, with their name and their email, and press the button. A phone number works instead of an email, and pasting a column straight out of a spreadsheet works too.

There is one checkbox under the box: "Also email these people when I add new work". Leave it unchecked and your customers are simply in your customer list, with nothing sent to them. Check it and they also join your email list, so Broidry includes them when it emails a roundup of your new pieces. Only check it for people who bought from you in the last couple of years and agreed to hear from you. Two reasons for the time limit: a customer from five years ago is the one most likely to mark you as spam, which hurts whether your next email reaches anybody at all, and Canada's email law only lets you write to a past customer for two years after they bought. Broidry does its half by putting an unsubscribe link and your business address on every email it sends for you.

Note: Customers you add this way are past history, exactly like an imported one. They never show up on your production list. They do not count toward the monthly order limit on the free plan unless you move one back onto your Orders board to work on it again.

Your shop's own email address

The Import page and the Inbox page show your shop's own Broidry email address. Email forwarded to it becomes a conversation in your Inbox. Press "Gmail forwarding steps" to open the steps for forwarding a Gmail address to it. Gmail's confirmation code comes to that address, so the card shows the code to you; type it into Gmail, then press "Done with this code".

What the import never does

The import only reads a file you downloaded yourself from your own account, and it never asks for your login to another platform.

It does not bring in an order twice. When a row has the same buyer, the same day and the same total as an order already in Broidry (from an earlier import, or one your connected Shopify store already sent over), it is left out, and Broidry tells you how many it left out. The same goes for a customer list: someone already in your customers is not added again.