Import your roster from a spreadsheet

Moving children and guardian contacts over from another system or a spreadsheet without retyping them.

For directors, assistant directors and admins

Preparing your file

You need a CSV file with a header row and one row per child. From another childcare system, look for an export of children or families as CSV. From Excel or Google Sheets, save or download the sheet as CSV. Comma, tab, semicolon and pipe separators all work, and column names don't have to match anything — you'll match them up in the app.

These are the details RoundUp can bring in:

• The child's first and last name, as two columns or one full-name column. Both names are needed.
• Date of birth, classroom, age group, and allergies or notes.
• Up to three guardians, each with a name, email and phone.

Authorized pickups, billing and attendance history aren't part of an import. A file laid out like this is easy to match:

Dates of birth

RoundUp reads numbers only, and refuses to guess, because a wrong birth date puts a child in the wrong ratio group. It accepts:

• Year first — 2022-03-14. The safest choice.
• Month first — 3/14/2022, 03-14-2022 or 3.14.2022. Two-digit years from 00 to 49 are read as 2000s, and 50 to 99 as 1900s.

Month names, dates with a time attached, and day-first dates aren't read correctly. A day-first date past the 12th is rejected, but one like 04/03/2022 is silently read as April 3 — so if your old system writes day first, reformat the column. In a spreadsheet, set the date column's format to year-month-day before saving as CSV.

A blank date of birth is allowed; the child comes in without one. A future date blocks the row, and a date that would make a child over 18 gets a warning.

Starting the import

Open More → Enrollment → Import roster, or More → Marketplace → Move your roster over → Open. Save the file somewhere your phone or tablet can reach first, such as Files or a cloud drive, then tap Choose CSV file. Nothing is added until the last step.

Matching columns

RoundUp guesses a column for each field from your headers and shows a few real values beside it. Check every guess against those values — a date-of-birth field quietly matched to an enrollment-date column is the mistake that looks fine until the ratios don't. Tap a field to pick a different column, or Not imported.

Preview import stays disabled until a name is matched: Child full name, or both Child first name and Child last name.

Reviewing before anything is added

The review counts what Will be added, what's Already here, what You skipped and what you Can't import.

• Classrooms in this file. Another system's room names are its own. Tap any marked New room and choose one of yours; kept as-is, those children are filed under a room your center doesn't have.
• Rows we can't import. A missing first or last name, or an unreadable or future date of birth. Fix them in the file and import again later; the rest still go through.
• Already on your roster. Matched on name and date of birth, or on name alone when either side has no birthday. Rows repeated within the file are caught too. If one is genuinely a different child, tap Add anyway.
• Ready to add. Any warnings sit under the child's name. Tap Skip to leave one out, and Add back to change your mind.

Importing

Tap Import with the number of children. Large files go up in batches of 200, with progress on the button. If it stops partway, the message says how many were added — and importing the same file again is safe, because anyone already added is skipped rather than duplicated.

After the import

Nothing is emailed to families. The import only creates records, which gives you time to check them before anyone else looks.

1. Spot-check rooms and allergies Open a few children from each room and confirm the details landed in the right fields.
2. Add authorized pickups They aren't imported, and check-out needs them. See Kiosk mode.
3. Invite families When the roster is right. See Invite families to the app.

More: All director guides