Required vs Optional Columns

--- title: Required vs Optional Columns (Client Import) collection: Clients tags: [import, clients, csv, fields]

summary: Which columns BenchFlow needs, which are optional, and how header auto-detection works.

Required vs Optional Columns

BenchFlow's client importer is forgiving — you don't need to rename your headers or follow a strict template. We auto-detect column names and accept many common variations.

Required (at least one of these)

Each row must have at least one of:

• Name — a full name, or a first + last name combination
• Email
• Phone

Rows with none of the above will be flagged as invalid and skipped.

Recommended

These aren't required, but make the rest of BenchFlow much more useful:

| Field | Why it matters | |---|---| | Email | Needed to send proposals, invoices and payment links | | Phone | Used for quick contact during production | | Birthday | Drives birthday reminders in the Clients page | | Anniversary | Drives anniversary reminders and helps spot repeat-sale opportunities | | Partner Name | Useful for engagement / wedding projects | | Finger Size, Necklace Length, Bracelet Length | Pre-fills measurements into quotes |

Optional

• Address Line 1 / Line 2
• Suburb / City
• State
• Postcode
• Country
• Notes
• Tags (comma- or semicolon-separated)
• Source (e.g. "Instagram", "Referral")

Column-name synonyms we recognise

You don't need to rename headers. BenchFlow recognises these variations automatically:

• Full Name: name, client name, customer, customer name, contact, contact name
• First Name: first, firstname, given name
• Last Name: last, lastname, surname, family name
• Email: email, email address, e-mail, mail
• Phone: phone, phone number, telephone, tel, home phone
• Mobile: mobile, mobile number, cell, cell phone
• Address: address, address 1, street, street address
• Suburb: suburb, city, town, locality
• Postcode: postcode, postal code, zip, zip code
• Birthday: birthday, birth date, dob, date of birth
• Anniversary: anniversary, wedding date, wedding anniversary
• Partner Name: partner, spouse, spouse name
• Finger Size: finger size, ring size
• Tags: tags, labels, categories

Date formats

Birthdays and anniversaries accept:

• YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 1990-05-12)
• DD/MM/YYYY (e.g. 12/05/1990)
• DD-MM-YYYY (e.g. 12-05-1990)

Two-digit years are interpreted as 19xx if greater than 50, otherwise 20xx.

Tags

Separate multiple tags with commas, semicolons or pipes:

vip, wedding, repeat

Anything else?

Columns BenchFlow doesn't recognise are simply ignored — they won't cause an import to fail. You can re-map them manually on the Map columns step if you want them imported into a different field.