Moving in
Nobody is retyping four years of records
The single biggest reason pantries stay on software they dislike is the fear of re-entering everything by hand. So this is the part we built carefully, and the part we are most careful not to overpromise about.
Export a CSV from whatever you use now
PantrySoft, Link2Feed, Oasis Insight, Pantry Trak, Airtable, Google Sheets, Excel — all of them can produce a CSV, usually from a menu called Export or Download. If you cannot find it, send us a screenshot of the menu and we will point at the right item.
Laevo reads the column headings
It recognises the header names these systems actually produce — FName, Client Last, HH Size, # in Household, DOB, Primary Phone, and a few hundred others — and lines each one up with a field.
You look at it before anything is saved
You see the first rows exactly as they will land, with every column mapping shown and changeable, and every row we could not read cleanly flagged with the reason. Nothing is written to your pantry until you press the button.
Rows with problems are never dropped quietly. A date we could not parse or a household size that says "four" instead of "4" is shown to you, and you decide.
It imports, and tells you what happened
How many neighbors came in, how many rows were skipped and why, and how many looked like duplicates of each other. The duplicates are put side by side for you to decide about — Laevo never merges two people on its own.
What we do not promise
- Not five minutes. An afternoon, including the part where you look at the preview and change two columns.
- Not full visit history. Last-visit dates come across. Visit-by-visit history varies too much between systems for us to import it honestly.
- Not your custom fields. If your old system had seven fields we do not have, they will come in as notes rather than disappearing — but they will not be searchable columns.
- Not your old reports. Reports already filed stay filed. Keep the export from your old system; it is the record.
Run both systems for one month and file one report from Laevo before you cancel anything. We will say this again when you start the import, because it is the advice that matters most.
Questions about switching
How long does it really take?
An afternoon for most pantries, including the part where you look at the preview and change your mind about two columns. We do not promise five minutes. Other pantry software does, and we have never watched anybody actually do it in five minutes.
What if our export is a mess?
Send it to us and we will look at it. Genuinely — a real person opens the file. Most messes are two columns that got merged or a date format nobody has seen since 1997, and both are quick to sort out once someone has looked.
Can we import visit history too?
Partly. If your export has a last-visit date, Laevo will record it so your neighbor records are not all brand new. Full visit-by-visit history varies too much between systems for us to import reliably, so we import the last visit and leave the rest in your old export, which you should keep.
What happens to our old system?
Keep it running until you have done one full month in Laevo and filed one report from it. Then cancel. Anyone who tells you to switch cold on the first of the month has never run a pantry.