Almost every agency in Dubai and Abu Dhabi keeps its inventory in Excel. The columns grew over the years: “Project”, “Type”, “Beds”, “Price”, “Owner mobile”, maybe a “View” or “Parking” column someone added. The good news is that you do not need to reformat any of it. The bad news is that a few things will go wrong if you import blindly. Here is how to avoid them.
Before you import: a 30-minute clean-up
- One row per unit. Remove subtotal rows, merged cells and colour-coded section headings.
- One header row. A title above the table is fine; two rows of headers are not.
- Phone columns as Text. Format them as Text in Excel so 0501234567 does not lose its zero or turn into 9.71501E+11.
- Delete what you no longer market. Old sold units can stay in an archive file.
Matching your columns
A good import reads your headers and the values underneath them. A column called “Type” that contains “Off plan”, “Ready” and “Rent” is the listing type; one that contains “Apartment”, “Villa” and “Townhouse” is the property type — whatever the header says. Check every suggestion on the matching screen before continuing, and keep columns the CRM does not know (such as “Plot no.”) as extra details rather than throwing them away.
Values that need care
| Your cell | Should be read as |
|---|---|
| 2.45M · AED 2,450,000 · 980k | 2,450,000 · 2,450,000 · 980,000 |
| 55,000/yr · 55k p.a. (rental) | Annual rent 55,000 |
| 780 sqft · 1,250 sq ft · 116 sqm | Size, with square metres converted |
| Studio · 3BR · 3 bed | 0 · 3 · 3 bedrooms |
| Q4 2027 · 31/12/2027 | Completion date 31 Dec 2027 |
| 050 123 4567 · 00971501234567 | +971 50 123 4567 |
If a cell cannot be read — a price written as “call me”, for example — the row should be flagged for you to fix, not silently saved as zero.
Rows that should not be imported
A listing with only a project name and nothing else is not a listing. Hold imported rows to the same standard as a listing added by hand: listing type, property type, project, and an asking price (or annual rent for rentals). Rows missing any of those should appear as errors in the review step, where you can fix or skip them.
Duplicates
- Listings: the same Property ID, or the same project, unit, type, bedrooms and size, is probably the same unit. Choose whether to skip it, update the existing listing, or create it anyway.
- Leads: match by phone number only. Two buyers called “Ahmed Ali” with different numbers are two people; the same number twice is one person.
Owner contacts
Owner name and phone columns are the most sensitive data in the file. Import them as private owner contacts, visible only to the agent who holds the listing, not as ordinary columns every colleague can see. Our guide on protecting owner contacts explains why this decides whether agents will use the CRM at all.
Importing buyer and tenant leads
A lead file only needs two columns — name and phone. When you import, record where the list came from (event, portal, referral, website) and the reason your agency may contact these people. Budgets like “1.5M–2M” should be split into a minimum and maximum. Then allocate the new leads to agents. The lead management guide covers what happens next.
After the import
- Spot-check ten listings against the spreadsheet.
- Download the error report and fix the rows that were skipped.
- Add advertising permit numbers to listings you are marketing (why it matters).
- Archive the spreadsheet so nobody keeps editing the old copy.
DocMak CRM’s import does each of these steps, and it is free for up to 10 agents. See how it works or start free.