Introduction
Assets can be added one-by-one in the asset editor or they can imported from a Comma Separated Values (CSV) -file produced by another platform.
The CSV data can be loaded from a file or it can be copy-pasted to the provided text-area. Data uploaded from a file is inserted into the text-area for verification and editing.
CSV Data Formatting
The overall requirements for the format of the CSV data to be imported:
A header row must be present
There must be at least one column: “description” (Also “name” and “details” work for this)
All header columns are case insensitive, so “type”, “Type”, “TYPE” are treated the same
The columns may be in any order
Unrecognized columns are gracefully ignored
Each record must have the same number of columns as the header
Spaces are allowed between the column-separating commas
It follows that if for any reason you need to have white space in the beginning or at the end of a text, you need to include that text in double quotes with the white space inside the quotes.
If a column value contains a comma, the entire value must be enclosed in double quotes.
Column Specifications
Field name in header | Estate Guru built-in values | Notes |
description or name or details | This is a free form text field describing the asset. E.g. for Real Estate it should be the address or other identifying information. | Required. |
type | Business (C Corp, LLC, LP) Checking/Savings/CD Account Health Savings Account Investment/Brokerage Account Life Insurance/Annuities Promissory Note Real Estate Retirement Account Other | Recommended. While you can provide the complete type from the cell on the left, the system also accepts partial values. E,g, “Checking”, “Checking Account” would map to the “Checking/Savings/CD Account” type in Estate Guru. If no match can be found in the type-column of the process attempts to derive the type from the description column. If that does not produce a type the asset is marked Other (and it can be later changed in the user interface). |
value | Approximate value of the asset as an integer. Both numbers and strings are accepted, so “100” and 100 are treated the same. | Optional. If not provided then a zero is used. |
account | This is a free form text field originally for storing an account number. | Optional. This field has been deprecated. Please provide sufficient identifying information about accounts in the description/name field, e.g. the financial institution and a few digits of the account number. |
owner | Full name First name First name “and” first name Full name “and” full name Values “both”, “shared”, “joint”, “together” can be used to indicate joint ownership. | Optional. This is only needed for joint accounts where an asset may be owned by either grantor or jointly by both. For single trusts the grantor is always marked as the owner of all assets. |
All the imported records are editable in the asset editor. Values can be modified and missing fields can be added.
Simple Samples
We use a made-up Married Joint estate plan for Gerald and Margaret in these samples. While CSV imports typically have multiple data rows, we are using just one here to highlight the functionality.
Below three headers are used.
Three items are populated to the assets:
In this sample we have four header columns. We use "both" for the owner so the asset editor will assign this asset to Gerald and Margaret. Also, a value is specified so that is populated in the asset editor.
Below the owner column is omitted.
The asset editor marks the missing owner field as needing a value before the imported data can be saved. Note that the value column is optional and can be left empty.
Any errors in the CSV import are shown in a modal. The modal has a short description of the error and also a link to this document.
