Importing TPO data into Light Blue

We’re pleased to announce that we are now able to offer a data import service for The Photographic Organiser (TPO) customers who want to import their data into Light Blue.

Here’s a summary of the TPO data that we’re importing into Light Blue:

• Job types
• Products
• Contacts & people
• Jobs & events
• Invoice totals
• Receipts

We are not importing quotes or purchases from TPO.

Read on for more detail about how we’re importing each type of data from TPO.

Job types

TPO job types are imported into Light Blue as shoot types. We’re importing the name and default session length for you.

Products

TPO products are being imported into price lists in Light Blue, split out into separate price lists for each TPO product group name. We are importing the product name, code (which won’t be displayed until Light Blue 7 is released), unit price, tax rate, and unit cost.

Contacts & people

TPO contacts and people are imported into Light Blue as contacts. Where a TPO contact has multiple people, we group the Light Blue contacts together. The contact information that we’re importing covers:

• Type
• Title
• First name
• Last name
• Job title / role
• Notes
• Birthday
• VAT Number (which won’t be displayed until Light Blue 7 is released)
• Warning
• Mailing list opt-in (if none of TPO’s “do not contact” flags are set, the contact is opted in to your mailing list)
• Phone & fax numbers
• Email addresses
• Web address
• Postal addresses
• Linked notes

Jobs

TPO jobs are imported into Light Blue as shoots. We’re importing:

• Shoot type (where it matches one of the shoot types listed in your TPO job types file)
• Job number (this goes into what we call the shoot reference number field)
• Notes

Job events are imported into Light Blue as appointments (for any TPO job type that ends in “Viewing” or “Meeting”) or sessions. The status field in Light Blue is at shoot-level rather than session-level, so we’re writing both the TPO event type and status into the session description field. If any of the sessions for a shoot that we’re importing are confirmed, we’re setting the status of the shoot to confirmed.

The following TPO job fields don’t have a direct equivalent in Light Blue, but we’re adding them to our shoot notes field so that you can refer back to them:

• Reference numbers
• Price
• Adults
• Children
• Pets

Invoices

TPO invoices are imported into Light Blue as sales. We’re importing:

• Invoice number
• Invoice date
• Linked contact
• Linked shoot
• Notes
• VAT Number (which won’t be displayed until Light Blue 7 is released)

TPO’s VAT calculations work differently to Light Blue’s, so we aren’t importing the items from TPO’s invoices. Instead, we’re importing a single item and using that to store TPO’s invoice net, VAT, and gross totals. This means that you can use your imported invoices to see the total value of each of your historic invoices, but not the details of the items that your clients ordered. If those details are important to you, you should keep a copy of the ‘Financial_Invoices_Items.xlsx’ file exported from TPO so that you can refer back to it in future.

Receipts

TPO receipts are imported into Light Blue as payments. We’re importing:

• Date
• Linked contact
• Payment method
• Amount
• Notes

We’re also matching up the imported receipts with your imported invoices.

13 March 2018 update: the way that TPO handled deposits from clients means that you can end up with deposits from clients that appear as unallocated Payment records in Light Blue. Because the way that TPO handles deposits is so different to the way that Light Blue handles them, we are not planning to change the way that we’re importing these records. If you would prefer to not import your TPO receipts into Light Blue, let us know and we will exclude them from the import.

How to arrange your TPO data import

To be able to import your TPO data into Light Blue, you need a Light Blue account and to have set up the desktop version of Light Blue. We strongly recommend that you take advantage of Light Blue’s free trial and our training and support resources to ensure that it is a good match for your needs before purchasing Light Blue or arranging your TPO data import.

When you’re ready to transfer your data, you need to:

1. Contact us via email so that we can check that your account is set up and ready to import data, and schedule a date for your import.
2. Contact TPO’s developers to arrange for them to export your TPO data.
3. Send us your TPO data export. We will need to check the data and arrange a time when we can access your account to do the import.

We charge £95+VAT to import your TPO data into Light Blue.