Moving your product list from Excel to a billing app

Most shops already have their products somewhere: an Excel price list, an old software export, or a register. Getting that list into a billing app in one go saves days of typing. A little tidying first makes the import clean.

1. One product per row

Each row should be one thing you sell, with the column names in the first row. Delete title rows, blank rows and totals at the bottom. (Sano Godam can find the header row under a title block, but a clean sheet is easier to check.)

2. The columns worth having

At minimum:

• Name: what appears on the bill.
• Selling price.

Strongly recommended:

• SKU or item code: your own short code. It lets a later import update the product instead of creating a copy.
• Barcode: for scanning.
• Unit: pcs, kg, litre, metre, box…
• VAT: for example “13%” or “Exempt”.
• Cost price: for profit and stock value.
• Opening stock: how many you have today.
• Category and low-stock alert level.

3. Clean the numbers

• Keep prices as plain numbers: 1,250 or 1250.50, not Rs 1,250/-.
• Keep one unit per column. Write the unit in the Unit column, not inside the price.
• Decide once whether your prices include VAT, and say so in a column or when importing.

4. Codes that don’t change

If your list has no codes, a billing app can make them from the names. But if the name changes later, the code won’t match. Adding your own codes now, even simple ones like RICE-25, makes future price updates a two-minute job.

5. Import in stages

1. Import a copy of your list.
2. Check a few products: price, VAT, unit, stock.
3. Make a test bill, and cancel it if you need to.
4. Only then start billing customers.

How the Sano Godam import works

• Upload or paste: Excel (.xlsx, .xls) or CSV, or paste cells straight from Excel. There’s also a template to download.
• Columns matched for you: English and Nepali headings are recognised (for example “Item”, “Particulars”, “सामान”, “मूल्य”), including Devanagari digits, and you can change any match. Matches are remembered for the next sheet like it.
• Check before saving: every row is validated, mistakes are shown next to the cell, and you can download just the rows with errors to fix them in Excel.
• Units, categories and brands: new ones are listed for you to confirm before they’re created. VAT rates are only matched to the rates you’ve set up, never created from a file.
• Safe to repeat: existing products are matched by SKU, then barcode, and are updated, never duplicated. Opening stock is only added to new products, so importing the same file twice doesn’t double your stock.
• More fields when you need them: brand, MRP, HS code, shelf, tags, wholesale and minimum prices, batch numbers and expiry dates, and size or colour variants.
• Round trip: export your products to Excel, change prices there, and import them back.
• VAT made clear: you choose whether the sheet’s prices include VAT, with an example of what the customer will pay either way, and a warning when prices equal the MRP (which always includes VAT). Chose wrong? Change many products at once from the Products screen.
• Big lists: a sheet with more than 20,000 rows is imported in parts, one after another, with a progress bar. You can stop and carry on later, and download any rows that weren’t imported (with the reason) to fix and import again.
• Works offline: large lists are saved in batches on your device and sync when you’re online.

Have a list ready? Start free and import it on the first day.