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Moving from a spreadsheet ​

Plenty of clubs run on one spreadsheet and a lot of goodwill. If that is yours, it is a perfectly good starting point. You email us the file and we do this with you, as part of setting your club up: we bring it in on your club's Bring members across page, with you checking each step, and nothing changes in your members until you have seen what it will do.

Who can do this?

Sending us the file and checking what came back: your club's Club Admin or Membership Manager. Running the import is ours, during onboarding; the page only appears once we have switched it on for your club. Adding one person by hand afterwards is for a Club Admin or Membership Manager.

What comes across ​

Your roster, as member records: one record per person, with whatever detail your file carries against them — name, date of birth, gender, phone number, address, emergency contact, when they first joined, their parkrun ID and their England Athletics registration number, or URN, where you have it. If your file does not say when someone first joined, that is left blank rather than set to the day of the import, so your joining figures only count people who actually joined this year.

  • Current members are put into the season you choose, on the membership type your file gives them. That records the membership they already have: no invoice, no payment, and they are ready to renew when the time comes.
  • Lapsed and resigned members come across with that status and no membership, so your club keeps them without renewals reaching them.
  • Families are grouped into households, so one person can renew for everyone.

Nothing is sent to anybody. An import creates and updates records; it does not email your club, and it creates no sign-ins.

How your file is matched to the members you already have ​

Most clubs have already imported their England Athletics roster by the time the spreadsheet arrives, so many of the people in the file are here already. Each row is matched first, and only somebody we cannot find becomes a new member.

  • By England Athletics number, then by name and date of birth. A row we match confidently to someone from your England Athletics roster fills in that record: the phone number, address and anything else it is missing. Their name, number and details stay as England Athletics has them.
  • Anyone else we match only has their blanks filled. Where your file and their record disagree, their record is kept, unless you ask us to use the file's values instead. We show you how many details that would change before you decide. A date of birth or an England Athletics number is never overwritten.
  • Anyone we are not sure about is held for you to decide: this member, a new member, or leave the row out. So are two rows that look like the same person.

Households work the same way. Where your file says who belongs together, we use that. Where it does not, we suggest groups — a junior with the adult whose email they share, or people with the same surname at the same address — and you accept or split each one.

What does not come across ​

  • Sign-ins. Imported people have no account until you give them one, and you choose when.
  • Consents. Collected once, at first sign-in, on your club's own current wording.
  • Medical information. A column that looks like medical detail is left out of the import altogether. Members add their own to their profile.
  • Money already collected. A spreadsheet of who paid what is a record of the past, not a set of memberships. Your treasurer keeps it for the accounts; RunClub HQ starts from the season you set up.
  • Anything nobody can explain. A column headed Status with six values and no key gets asked about rather than guessed at.

What to get ready before you send it ​

You do not need to reformat anything. What helps is knowing what is in it. A CSV file or an Excel workbook both work.

  1. Put everybody in one file, one row per person, including juniors and anybody who has lapsed. Do not split it into a sheet per membership type: only the first sheet is read.
  2. Give every column a heading, even if the heading is only meaningful to you.
  3. Check dates of birth. They are how a row is matched to a member you already have, so an approximate one either holds the row for you or makes a duplicate.
  4. Say which people are actually current. Most club spreadsheets carry everyone who has ever been a member, and only your committee can tell us which of them are members now.
  5. Say who belongs with whom. Two parents and three juniors at one address is a household, and a family number or a shared column saves you confirming each one.
  6. Say what your codes mean. M/F/J, Full/Assoc/2C, a colour-coded cell — a two-line note is enough. We remember what each of your words means, so a second file from the same system maps itself.
  7. Send it by whatever you use. Email it to whoever set your club up, or attach it to a message through Getting help. If your file holds health information, say so, and we will agree how to send it.

If your club is affiliated to England Athletics, start there instead

England Athletics holds a cleaner list of your members than most club spreadsheets do, and it needs no file from anybody — see Getting your members in. Your spreadsheet is still worth sending afterwards: it is usually where the email addresses, phone numbers and households live, which England Athletics does not share.

Checking it before anything changes ​

Before anything is written, the page shows what bringing the file across would do, in one sentence and row by row: how many new members, how many England Athletics records filled in, how many existing members updated, in how many households, and how many memberships on which types. Anything that needs you is listed, and nothing can be brought across while it waits.

We go through it with you. When the numbers look like your club, we choose the season to record the current members into — your current season, unless you say otherwise — and bring them across.

If something comes in wrong ​

An import can be undone while nothing depends on it: the whole file, or one row that was wrong. Undoing it deletes the members it created and puts back what it changed on the members you already had, down to their status.

Undo is not offered once anybody it brought across has been given a sign-in since the import, has paid, been invoiced or renewed, has been merged with another record, or has been changed by someone since — their details or their recorded membership. Nor is it offered for a new member who has since become part of anything else in the club, such as a check-in, a message or another member's emergency contacts. By then the import is your club's history, and a wrong detail is corrected on the member's record like any other. The page says exactly which of these applies.

Undo closes after 30 days

The file you sent is deleted as soon as its members are brought across. Our working copy of it is deleted 30 days later, because a club's member list is personal data. After that the import can no longer be undone at all, as a whole or one row at a time.

What happens next ​

  1. You check it. The number of members, a handful of names, a handful of dates of birth. It takes 10 minutes and is the whole point of doing it before anybody is invited in.
  2. You find Direct Debits, if your members pay through your club's own GoCardless account — see From GoCardless.
  3. You give sign-ins out, starting with your committee — see Running a pilot → Step 5. The email from your file is already filled in when you choose Enable login.
  4. You send welcome emails, in batches you choose — see Bulk-welcome imported members.

What your members see ​

Nothing, until you decide. An imported person has a record and no account: no email, no notification, no sign-in.

When you are ready, you enable a sign-in for them and they get an invitation. They follow it, sign in with a link or a 6-digit code, and complete a short form — the details you did not have, and the club's agreements. Then they are in.

Adding one person by hand ​

For a handful of people you do not need us at all: Members → All Members → Add Prospect adds one. It is fine for the three people who joined after you sent us the file, and not a way to load a club.

See also ​

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