Setup checklist: choose cases that can fail differently
A useful pilot includes an ordinary person, an organization, several people at one company, a possible duplicate, a shared role address and a record with important historical context. Add any field or relationship the team depends on. This is not a random sample sized to prove statistical accuracy. It is a deliberate set of cases designed to expose mapping mistakes before they affect the whole list. Keep real customer data out of unapproved test environments.
Write expected outcomes first
For each row, record whether you expect a new record, an update or no action. Note the critical values and links that should survive. Capsule’s import documentation explains the available mapping choices; your expectation record provides the independent comparison. Without it, a created-record count can look plausible even when people and organizations are linked incorrectly. Do not change the expectation after the import merely to make the outcome appear correct.
Verify the actual working record
Check what colleagues will see, not only the import summary. Confirm names, organizations, important dates and the context needed for the next action. Examine the awkward cases individually. If a duplicate-looking row was merged or updated, establish why. Stop the next batch if you cannot explain the result. A small unresolved discrepancy is valuable evidence during a pilot; repeating it at full scale turns it into a much harder cleanup problem.
Choose the next batch deliberately
Proceed only when the mapping and exception rules are understood. Preserve the pilot file, settings and result so the larger import does not quietly use different assumptions. If you must change the model, create a new documented pilot rather than pretending the original evidence still applies. The purpose is not to avoid every possible error. It is to make errors observable, attributable and bounded before the team depends on the migrated records for live commitments.
Sources used for this page
These records support the facts and comparisons above. Merchant-controlled records are labelled so you can separate product claims from independent evidence.
- Capsule importing contacts — Merchant documentation · capsulecrm.com · Merchant-controlled · checked 2026-09-20