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Importing data into Kimai, migrating from another system

Importing data

Kimai 1.30.0 2.0.35 (latest version)

Table of contents

Kimai has multiple ways of importing data. Some are pre-made commands, but for more complicated use-cases the API should be used instead.

Importing from Kimai v1

There is a dedicated chapter about migrating data from Kimai v1.

Importing customer

The kimai:import:customer command will import customer.

bin/console kimai:import:customer customer.csv

Supported attributes (field names are case-insensitive):

Customer attribute Supported field names
Name project, projectname, project name, project-name, name
Account number, account, customer number, customer account
Company name company, company name, company-name
Description description, comment
E-Mail email, e-mail, e mail
Country country
Vat-ID vat, vat-id, vat id, tax-id, tax id
Address address
Contact contact
Currency currency
Timezone timezone
Phone phone
Mobile mobile
Fax fax
Homepage homepage
Color color
Budget budget
Time budget time budget, time-budget
Visible visible
Meta fields meta.xxx

Options

Possible options:

  • --importer=default - the importer to use (supported: default, grandtotal) - default: default
  • --reader=csv - the reader to use (supported: csv, csv-semicolon) - default: csv
  • --no-update - if you want to create new customer, but not update existing ones

You can see all option by calling bin/console kimai:import:customer --help.

Example

Import a minimum CSV example file (using semicolon as delimiter) with:

bin/console kimai:import:customer customer.csv --reader=csv-semicolon

The customer.csv file:

Name;Company
Acme,Acme university Ltd.

A multi column-example, which will leave existing customers alone during import:

bin/console kimai:import:customer customer.csv --reader=csv --no-update

The customer.csv file:

Name,Company,Number,Comment,Phone,Timezone,Meta.XYZ
Acme,Acme university Ltd.,12367800,A longer comment to talk about the project,0011234567890,Europe/Berlin,hello foo 123

Via Grandtotal

There is a plugin for Mac invoicing software Grandtotal, which adds support for Kimai.

In case your leading system for customers is Grandtotal, you can import customers from a Grandtotal CSV export into Kimai. Grandtotal calls CSV exports Numbers in the export screen.

bin/console kimai:import:customer grandtotal.csv --reader=csv-semicolon --importer=grandtotal

Attention: Grandtotal exports its data with column names in the UI language (just like Kimai). Kimai only supports imports for GT exports from the languages english and german, so you might have to change it in Settings / Languages / User interface.

Importing projects

The kimai:import:project command will import projects and create missing customers on the fly.

An empty team (with the projects name) can be created for each project, in which case the teamlead options needs to be set.

bin/console kimai:import:project project.csv

Supported attributes (field names are case-insensitive):

Project attribute Supported field names
Name project, projectname, project name, project-name, name
Customer name customer, customername, customer-name, customer name
Description description, comment
Order number ordernumber, order-number, order number
Order date orderdate, order-date, order date
Color color
Budget budget
Time budget time budget, time-budget
Visible visible
Meta fields meta.xxx

Options

Possible options:

  • --importer=default - the importer to use (supported: default) - default: default
  • --reader=csv - the reader to use (supported: csv, csv-semicolon) - default: csv
  • --teamlead=USERNAME - if you want to create empty teams for each project pass an existing username for the new teamlead (teams will be assigned to the projects, but not to the customers)
  • --no-update - if you want to create new projects, but not update existing ones

You can see all option by calling bin/console kimai:import:project --help.

Example

Import a minimum CSV example file (using semicolon as delimiter) with:

bin/console kimai:import:project project.csv --reader=csv-semicolon

The project.csv file:

Name;Customer
Test project;Test customer

A multi column-example, creating teams for new projects and leaving existing projects alone will be imported with:

bin/console kimai:import:project project.csv --reader=csv --teamlead=anna_admin --no-update

The project.csv file:

Name,Customer,Comment,OrderNumber,OrderDate,Meta.XYZ
My great project,Acme university,A longer comment to talk about the project,1234567890,2019-08-29,hello foo 123

Importing timesheets

This will import timesheets and create these elements on the fly:

  • missing customer
  • missing projects
  • missing activities

Users need to exist before (mainly because the user timezone setting will be used to import the timesheets).

bin/console kimai:import:timesheet --timezone=UTC --activity=global --delimiter=";" --customer="Imported customer" ~/Downloads/import-timesheets.csv

Options

You can see all option by calling bin/console kimai:import:timesheet --help.

Example

"Date","From","To","Duration","Rate","User","Customer","Project","Activity","Description","Exported","Tags","Hourly rate","Fixed rate"
"2020-05-04","15:50","17:51","7260","231.92","user@example.com","Customer LLC","My project", "Testing","some work has been done","0","foo,bar","115.00","0"
  • Date: format Y-m-d
  • From and To: should be given in 24h format
  • Duration: in seconds
  • Rate: A floating number of the records rate (optional, if you don’t set the value it will be calculated)
  • Hourly Rate: A floating number for the hourly rate (optional, if you don’t set the value it will be calculated)
  • Fixed Rate: A floating number for the fixed rate of this record (optional, you can skip this column)
  • Customer, Project and Activity: will be matched by name
  • User: will be matched by username or email
  • Exported: can be 0 or 1 (0 = new, 1 = exported)
  • Tags: comma separated list of tag names

There is also a user contributed plugin for importing CSV data, which can be found here: https://github.com/neontribe/KimaiCvsImportBundle