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Best practices for formatting your data

The territory and quota planning tools available in Varicent Sales Planning rely on the data that you import. To get the most out of this product, you must make sure your data is properly formatted and contains all the required information. We've provided you with some best practices to keep in mind when formatting your data.

Important

Varicent Sales Planning file import currently only supports CSV files.

Follow these guidelines for a successful file import:

  • Your file is in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format

    This means that if you create your data in a text file, you use commas (,) to separate your columns. If you use a tool like Excel to create your data, you don't have to worry about commas, but make sure you save as .csv.

  • Your file contains all required columns

    Required columns vary depending on the file type. We have provided template files and specific formatting instructions for each file type in this documentation set. See Data file templates. Any customizations you make, such as adding a custom hierarchy or metric field, may also impact the required columns for a file.

  • Column data is in the expected format

    If you're creating your CSV file in Excel, make sure all your column formats are set to Text format, not General. This makes sure that any data with a proceeding zero (for example, USA zip codes like 01232) are not dropped from your file. The exceptions to this are that date columns are in Date format and numeric columns (like sales data) are in General format, without comma thousand separators.

  • You use consistent capitalization

    Required columns are case sensitive, so make sure that the capitalization matches the required column names provided for each file type. All data entries are also case sensitive. For example, if you have a quota component called "Hardware" and a quota component field is written as "hardware" in your activity file, the activity will not be sorted into a territory during coin sorting.

  • Your file does not contain empty rows

    For example, a common mistake is to include an empty row at the end of your file, which can result in upload errors.

  • Your file does not contain duplicate rows or entries

    For example, some fields required a unique ID, such as the Key column in your hierarchy files. If two of your hierarchy members share the same Key value, you will get an error during file upload.

  • A field value in your file does not contain more than 100 characters