Issue uploading schools, not school districts, as "companies."/Bringing in multiple co

[ENewman]

Hello!

We want to upload, from spreadsheets, thousands of schools as prospective "companies" (with 1-3 associated contacts for each school.) 

The schools in a district tend to have the same domain name.  Again, we want the schools (not the school districts) to be the "company."

What is the best solution for this?  How do we best format the spreadsheets to make the upload go smoothly?  How do we best set up HubSpot for this?

Much thanks!

Eric Newman 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @ENewman,

Unfortunately, there isn't a straightforward solution to this. HubSpot has the concept of parent/child company which would allow you to use the district as the parent and the school as the child, see here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/companies/how-can-i-add-a-parent-or-child-company-to-an-existing-compa...

However, this relationship cannot be set with an import. It has to be manually after the import, which in your case is unfortunately not feasible. Other users would like to see this changed and have requested it from the product team here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Import-Parent-Child-Relationships-for-Companies/idi-p...

Another option would be to set up a custom object for the schools. You would use the company object for the district and create a custom object for the schools – which you can then associate. This is an Enterprise feature: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/use-custom-objects

If you're on the free CRM, Starter or Professional, unfortunately, there currently isn't a bulk solution at the moment. HubSpot deduplicates company records by company domain so it would have to be another object or a company child.

Best regards!

[mike-ward · Accepted solution]

Hi @ENewman ,

You could try and 'fake' the domain name for the Company record, but it may or may not suit your needs.

For example, let's say the district domain is "districtone.com" which has three schools, A, B and C. There is nothing theoretically to stop you from creating three companies with domain names like this:

schoola.districtone.com
schoolb.districtone.com
schoolc.districtone.com

Those sub-domains don't actually have to exist. From my testing with this, the `districtone.com` domain does have to exist, but you can actually use any sub-domain you like underneath that.

Obviously, this may not help you at all - as @karstenkoehler says, there's no way to maintain the relationship properly between school and district, and any new contacts you add won't be automatically associated with the company based on the email domain, but it might help you if those things are not important to you.

But it's clearly a bit of a hacky approach, so do test it very thoroughly!

Regards,

Mike

---

Did I answer your question? If your question is answered, please mark it as a solution. If you need more help, hit that big orange 'Reply' button!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @ENewman,

Unfortunately, there isn't a straightforward solution to this. HubSpot has the concept of parent/child company which would allow you to use the district as the parent and the school as the child, see here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/companies/how-can-i-add-a-parent-or-child-company-to-an-existing-compa...

However, this relationship cannot be set with an import. It has to be manually after the import, which in your case is unfortunately not feasible. Other users would like to see this changed and have requested it from the product team here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Import-Parent-Child-Relationships-for-Companies/idi-p...

Another option would be to set up a custom object for the schools. You would use the company object for the district and create a custom object for the schools – which you can then associate. This is an Enterprise feature: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/use-custom-objects

If you're on the free CRM, Starter or Professional, unfortunately, there currently isn't a bulk solution at the moment. HubSpot deduplicates company records by company domain so it would have to be another object or a company child.

Best regards!

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @ENewman 

Thank you for reaching out.

I want to tag some of our experts on this - @StjepanGrcic @ndwilliams3 @johnelmer do you have any recommendations for @ENewman on this? 

Thank you!

Best

Tiphaine

[ENewman]

Thank you Tiphanie! 

Any other suggestions for how I can inquire and receive the best solutions for the issue and questions I presented?

Eric Newman