Prepare Your Spreadsheet

Once CAM Administrator and Purchasing are ready for the import process, you can prepare your spreadsheet for import.

The following fields are required for import.

Order Level Field Requirements

All imported items, independent of type, require some basic order information:

  • Order number: A text value representing an order number. If the vendor did not provide an order number, you can create one.
  • Order date: The date of the activity.
  • Order type: This value allows you to a have a single spreadsheet with both purchase and lease data. This value specifies which records are purchases or leases:
    • Purchase: P or Purchase
    • Leases: L or Lease

Line Item Type Values

The line item type value represents whether an item to be imported is software, hardware, software maintenance, or hardware maintenance:

  • Software: S or Software
  • Hardware: H or Hardware
  • Software maintenance: SM, SOFTWAREMAINTENANCE, or SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE
  • Hardware maintenance: HM, HARDWAREMAINTENANCE, or HARDWARE MAINTENANCE

Line Item Type Requirements

The following represent the field requirements based on the line item type (software, hardware, software maintenance, or hardware maintenance):

Hardware Detail Requirements
  • Name: Description of the hardware item.
  • Quantity: The number of items. The Quantity field in the spreadsheet you import must match the Quantity field in the line item that you are creating or updating.

    Example

    Spreadsheet to import:

    Quantity field in the line item in Purchasing:

  • Hardware Type: This must either match a hardware type in the Preferences panel or be Computer. See Preparing Purchasing for Importing Purchasing Data for more information.
Hardware Maintenance Detail Requirements
  • Name: This can be a hardware item or a description of the service.
Software Detail Requirements
  • Name: Usually the product name.
  • Quantity: The total line items for each entry. If your imported data has multiple entries for the same line item in your spreadsheet, then the Quantity in this field should reflect the total line items for each entry. Example: If you have a line item with 25 computers and your spreadsheet has 25 entries for each assignment, the Quantity should be 25 on each entry in the spreadsheet.
  • License type(s):
    • Concurrent: concurrent
    • Freeware: freeware or free
    • Per core: per core, percore, or core
    • Per processor: per processor, perprocessor, or processor
    • Per seat: per seat, perseat, seat, nonconcurrent, non concurrent, or not concurrent
    • Per seat with usage: per seat with usage , perseatwithusage , per seat usage , perseatusage , or usage
    • Per server: per server, perserver, or server
    • Shareware: shareware
    • Per user: per user, peruser, or user
    • Site: site
    • Unmanaged: nolicensing, none, unmanaged, or not managed

Software Maintenance Detail Requirements

  • Name: description of the software maintenance.

Assignment Requirements

Optional: You can assign imported purchasing records to a user or machine, then assign them to a group. If you want to be able to assign imported records, your spreadsheet should include the following fields:

  • (Optional) Serial number: The serial number of the hardware or software item being imported.
  • Assigned type: You can assign imported software items to users or machines (depending on license type); you can assign imported computers to users, and other assets to either users or machines.
    • User: User
    • Machine: Machine
    • Unassigned: {blank value}
  • Number of items assigned.

    There are three use cases for assigning during import:

    • Every individual item is assigned to one person/machine. In this case, let the purchasing import process create the assignment quantity of 1 for you. You don't need a separate column in your spreadsheet. Leave Number of items assigned unmapped.
    • Items are assigned in bulk to one person/machine (the entire quantity ordered is assigned to the same person; for example, the head of a department). In this case, you can map line item quantity and number of items assigned to the same column in your spreadsheet.
    • Mixture of individual and bulk assignments. In this case, separate columns for line item quantity and assignment quantity are needed.
  • Assignment group: This field is designed to be mapped to a group name that matches a group created in CAM Administrator.  For Per user license units, the group name must match a user group. For machines and all other (not Per user) license unit license types, the group name must match a machine group. For other assets, the group name must match an other asset group.

When you're satisfied with your spreadsheet, proceed to the next step: Importing Data into Purchasing.