Import Parent Child Relationships for Companies and Contacts...

[DCPS]

I have over 500 parent companies each with anywhere from 10 to 500 child companies that I really don't want to set all the realtionships by hand. I also have thousands of contacts that I need to relate to their companies. Please help...

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @DCPS and everyone,

This is now possible via regular import, as per a product update on August 15th. To see the update, open your HubSpot account, click on the account name in the top right corner, followed by Product Updates.

Copied from the announcement:

What is it?

Users can now include the "Parent company" property within a company import file to create parent child associations between companies in bulk.

Why does it matter?

Confidence that you can accurately reflect your business' data in the CRM is key. For many, this means creating parent-child relationships between company records. Today, the only way to create a parent-child relationship is manually on the company record, on a one-by-one basis. This simply doesn't cut it for those who are onboarding on to HubSpot and need to create potentially hundreds of theses associations.

With this update, you will be able to now take this action in bulk by using the imports tool, saving time and energy as you bring your data into HubSpot.

How does it work?

Before creating parent-child company associations via import, make sure that all your parent companies are already within the CRM.

Once all your parent records are in the CRM, find the record ID for your parent companies. You can do this by manually going to each record and searching for Record ID when viewing all properties. Alternatively, you can export a group of companies – the record ID will be the first column found within your import.

Next, create an import file for your child companies. Include a column called "Parent company" and add the record IDs of the corresponding parent companies into this column.

Finally, import this file into HubSpot. Make sure to map the parent company column to the HubSpot property of the same name.

Once your import is complete, you'll have created a parent-child relationship between the records in your import (child companies) and the records identified by the record IDs found within the Parent company column.

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Hope this helps!

[CorinaAvila]

Hi Karsten, how would we associate contacts with specific child companies? 

[MShandor0]

glad this is available now.  for my business there is no true parent company and child companies.  I did find a solution when you want multiple companies under the same owner.  Once there is a contact id number you can upload all companies using the same contact id and then they all show under companies versus under child companies and then you have the choice to designate one as a primary company.  

[CCaffrey]

This feature really needs to be implemented.  This is incredebly frustrating.  I have thousands of contacts that need parent/child associations imported.  I really do not want to pay for a third-party service for such a simple solution that should already exist natively. 

[MShandor]

I believe I have found the workaround for this.  NOTE:  To use this technique both the parent company and child company must already exist in Hubspot and have a Company ID.

Ex. ABC Company with Company ID 123456 Parent Company

DEF Company with Company ID 222222 CHILD

GHI Company with Company ID 333333 CHILD

Using an Excel spreadsheet, add an additional column with the title Parent Company

Next to companies DEF and GHI in the Parent Company column enter 123456.  

I was not able to do this without first adding the companies to Hubspot.  I would recommend uploading all of your companies, then creating a list with any of the companies you had to add to Hubspot (if you are setting up your account for this first time this will be easy).  Export the list and add the appropriate Parent Company for each child.  

This should allow the association to happen.

[MShandor]

I apologize because I know the solution did not work for everyone although I was hoping it would.  I do have a confirmed workaround that I have tried and it does actually work but it is not a true solution if you really need a parent/child.

Normally, Hubspot will not allow you to associate multiple companies with the same contact which for my industry is why I was using parent/child.  We work with owners who have multiple properties.  On a whim I decided to upload a spreadsheet where each property had the same contact listed and the same contact ID.  When I did this it associated all of the properties with the contact.  Now when I look at John Smith for example if he owns 4 properties they all show under his name.  

Not perfect but it works.  Note if the contact is not in Hubspot already you must add them first.  Once they have a contact ID, you can list that ID for each of their locations/companies/businesses and they will all appear associated with that contact.

If you really need parent-child my recommendation would be to upload the parent first and then do another upload with all of the children companies because by default the first one you upload/enter will be listed first.

Hope this helps until the feature is added.

[CCaffrey]

@MShandor  tried this exactly as you outline and it does not work.  There is no way to select "Parent Company" during the import because it is a "Read Only" value.  See screenshot below.  Is there another way???

[CBEAUCAMP]

Bonjour @MShandor, 

Selon votre exemple, un problème se pose.

Lors de l'importation dans Hubspot les propriétés Company ID et Company name sont reconnues mais pas Parent company. Pouvez-vous décrire votre process ?

Parent company est en lecture seule

[SakariJokinen]

HubSpot says:
"Parent Company" is a read-only property, so no data can be imported to it.

I was not able to do any import this way. I have not heard that this would work before. Do you have a video or screenhsots of it working?

[aislync]

We really need this feature to be an option. I am updating our database and as we work with schools and districts, i have over 9000 districts that need up to 800 child companies associated with them and doing this manually is not feasable. It is causing us to not be able to use companies and company properties as well as we should be as well as associating contacts with those companies.

[Elyn]

100% agree. 

[johncgilmore]

Same problem here. Hubspot's approach just doesn't really take government or school sales very seriously, probably because the market for b2b (with defined domains for each sales group) is their focus. 

Or they just don't understand that every school in a district uses the same domain. 

The only way I've been able to make this stuff work is very large zapier workflows. 

I tried for a year using a certain deal pipelines as "schools" and not using parent child relationships at all -- districts were companies and schools were deals on the SCHOOLS pipeline. But then reps started using those School pipeline deals as real deals and I couldn't get them to remember not to touch those since they are actually child companies tied to parent districts. 

The advantage of the above is that the data can be aggregated up to the parent district. 

Now I am using actual parent child relationship with parent district and child schools, but none of the data rolls up, which is disappointing and also a bit confusing to me. Not quite sure what the value of a parent child relationship is when it's not rolling up data. 

Having been in ed tech 10 years this is why I've tried and then dropped hubspot so many times haha. 

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @aislync 

Thank you for reaching out. 

At the moment it's not possible natively with HubSpot but you could do that with Import2 or Trujay for example. I'd also recommend upvoting this Idea in our Ideas Forum regarding this. You can also subscribe to the idea (Options > Subscribe) to get notified if the status changes. 

Thank you

Best

Tiphaine

[MatthewBoyd]

Hey All, 

If this is still something you are looking for, @Dave_ at Integration Fox has built a tool that does this really well and is able to recreate it for others incredibly affordably

Based on setting a Parent Company ID property either manually or via an import, Integration Fox automatically creates a Parent/Child relationship with the matching Company. 

Easy!

[ScotTrumeter]

Hey there @DCPS,

We can migrate Parent/Child relationships for you no problem and have done this for many of our customers.  Feel free to reach out to me at scot@trujay.com, would be happy to discuss.

Best, 

Scot

[TrujayJay]

Hi all,

We can help. Please feel free to reach out to me directly (jay@trujay.com) for additional info!

Best,

Jay Hendricks

Founder/CCO
Trujay
trujay.com

[MFrankJohnson]

Q: Import Parent Child Relationships for Companies and Contacts...?

Short A: You'll want to use a 3rd-party import service to maintain associations while importing from another CRM into HubSpot CRM.

Longer A:

The one we like is Import2 -- awesome service.

UPDATE (2019): The HubSpot CRM Associations API now supports parent/child relationships.

UPDATE:

- see [Now Live] 5 Updates to Import You Don’t Want to Miss (1-Aug-2018)

- see [Now Live] Import, Deduplicate, and Search Objects Using Object ID (16-Aug-2018)

- see [HubSpot Connect] - Import2 Wizard Integration (26-Jul-2018)

- see Introducing Parent-Child Relationships in HubSpot CRM (26-Jan-2017)

[Carly_Farlow]

I tried using this 3rd party importer. However, it created duplicate accounts. I tried adding company ID to the Import only to find the 3rd party doesn't use Company IDs. Know of another way? 

[TrujayJay]

Hi Carly! We (Trujay / Data2CRM) use the Company ID when doing parent/child imports, so we can easily help you. Feel free to reach me at jay@trujay.com and we can get you squared away quickly.


Warmly,

Jay

[markkofman]

If you have been using Import2 Wizard for the task, please note that it has 2 functions:

- Import, that will always create a new record

- Export, that will update existing records and therefore will not create any duplicated for you. 

And if you reach out to Import2 help, I am sure you will get help with getting this setup correctly to avoid the duplicates