Member information for companies Limited by Guarantee is not stored by Companies House, meaning no member details are brought in to Inform Direct when the company is imported. 

Our member import tool is available to speed up the process of adding the members. Once recorded they will be shown on the electronic registers on Inform Direct and membership certificates can be generated. 

The import will be completed from a csv file, this should contain as a minimum the members' details.  It can also contain the address, guarantee & certificate details. Our guide includes confirmation of which fields are optional and a downloadable template: How to format a Member Upload csv file

Note: We recommend using our downloadable example template to populate your data as this will make the mapping steps simpler. 

You can include the membership certificate details as part of the upload and it will generate the certificates for you, if you plan to do this there are 2 items to consider:

• The member address details should be included on the spreadsheet if you require these to appear on the membership certificate. 
• The software will default to the basic membership certificate template where there are no prior certificates created for the company in question. As such, if there is a particular certificate template you wish to use, one should be generated manually for an existing member prior to completing the import. Those uploaded will then use the same template.

1. To access the import process please click the Members tab and select Bulk upload members.

2. The Bulk upload members section will initially show a history of any uploads previous completed, if this is the first upload it will be blank.

To start, select the Begin new upload button on the right of the screen.  
 

3. The Upload members page asks firstly for confirmation of which membership class the upload is being completed for. If the class is yet to be created it will populate an Ordinary class with a guarantee of £1 for you during the process. 

To add a membership class with a guarantee that is not £1 or for further details of what needs to be shown in the class details see How Do I Create a Membership Class?

You are then able to upload your csv upload file, this can either be dragged and dropped to the upload section, or clicking to browse files. 

At the bottom of this step is also an option to download an example of a csv in the required format. If you use this you will need to delete the four examples included as otherwise they will be uploaded as members.
 

4. A mapping page for the personal details of the members will appear, this allows you to confirm which fields you wish to upload for each member. 

It is effectively confirming which columns on the spreadsheet you are using relate to the Inform Direct fields, for example the forename column on the csv is imported to the forename field in Inform Direct. 

Note: Certain fields are optional and can be left blank. This is shown under the Field title on the left of the page. 

Help text is provided on the right of the screen & the Examples area allows you to move through columns of your csv file to ensure the information shows as expected.

5. The following step is for the mapping of addresses, it allows you to confirm the csv column lines up to the correct Inform Direct field. 

Help text is also available on screen. 
 

Note: Membership contact addresses are not a requirement, so there is an option to continue without adding address information. 
 

6. The final mapping step is for membership details, this allows you to confirm the correct columns from the csv file for the guarantee amount and membership certificate details. 

Clicking Submit will complete the upload. 
 

7. The upload is then processed by Inform Direct. Once complete it will confirm the number which have been uploaded and if any could not be imported. 
 

Note: Depending on the number of records being imported, it may take up to 10 minutes. You can exit the process while it is running in the background and continue with other tasks. 

From this page there will be a button to Return to members list where you can view the members now showing. 

In the event any are unsuccessful there will be a button to Download errors. See step 8 for further details of the errors.

8. Errors will be immediately available to download at the summary step, but in the event you have left the member upload while it is processing you will receive an email and a check alert on the Dashboard tab of the company which shows details of any records which could not be uploaded. 

The document downloaded to show the errors will contain a column detailing the reason why they were unsuccessful. 

Once the information is corrected you can complete a new import for the records which previously contained errors, or if it is a small number it may be simpler to add them individually, see How do I Add Members to a Company Limited by Guarantee.