Importing players from a spreadsheet

Club HubClub admins and team management3 min read

Already got your players in a spreadsheet? Import them into a team in one go, instead of inviting them one at a time.

Before you start

Save your spreadsheet as a CSV file. In Excel: File, Save As, CSV UTF-8. In Google Sheets: File, Download, CSV.

One row per player, with column headings in the first row.
Up to 100 players at a time. For a bigger list, split it by team.
The page has a Download a template link if you’d rather start from ours.

LEKKIN reads each player’s first name and surname, and if you have them their display name, date of birth, squad number and email, and their guardian’s first name, surname, display name and email. Many players won’t have an email, and that’s fine: a first name and surname on their own are enough.

First name and surname go in separate columns. A single “Name” column isn’t split for you, so split it in your spreadsheet first. Our template’s columns are: Player first name, Player surname, Player display name, Date of birth, Squad number, Player email, Guardian first name, Guardian surname, Guardian display name and Guardian email. A display name is only for someone known by a name other than their first and last name.

Dates are read day first, the way they’re written in the UK: 04/07/2013 is the 4th of July.

Your club’s own player fields (a shirt size, a school) can come from the spreadsheet too: each one is a column you can choose, and a column headed with the field’s name is chosen for you. See Your own player fields.

Importing

The import goes in three steps, shown as tabs across the top: The file, Check and Added. You can go back to the file from the check; the check and the report open only as you reach them.

Open People and, on the Players tab, choose Import from a spreadsheet from the button in the bottom corner. Or, on a team’s page, choose Import players from the same button, and that team is chosen for you.
Choose the team they’re joining.
Choose your CSV file.
Check the columns. LEKKIN guesses what each column holds from its heading, and shows an example from your file under each one. Change any guess that’s wrong, and set columns you don’t want to Don’t import.
Press Check.

Checking the rows

Nothing has been added yet. Every row shows the player’s first name, surname and display name, so you can see how each will be named, and says what will happen to it:

Will be added. They join the team straight away.
Will be added, with invitations. Anyone with an email address is sent an invitation to the Player Hub, exactly as when you invite a player yourself. The summary at the top says how many emails will go.
Already in this team. Skipped.
Possible duplicate. Somebody with the same name is already a player at your club. These are skipped, so nobody is added twice by mistake, even if the dates of birth differ, because a typo in a date is more likely than two players with the same name. If it really is somebody else, tick They’re somebody else: add as a new player.
A squad number that’s already taken in the team, or that an earlier row in your file already gives, is a problem with that row. It’s skipped, so nobody is added without the number you gave them: change the number or leave it blank, and import that row again.
A problem, like a missing first name or surname, an email address that isn’t one, a date that isn’t a real date, a guardian’s email with no guardian name, or one of your own player fields left empty when it’s required or holding something it can’t (a shirt size that isn’t one of your choices). Skipped. Fix it in your spreadsheet and import that row again later.

Press Add players when it looks right, or Back to change the file or the columns.

What happened to each row

The last page lists every row: added, skipped or not added, with the reason. One bad row never stops the others.

If a player’s email already has a LEKKIN account, they join the team when they accept the invitation, not before, and their own date of birth is kept rather than the one in your file. The page tells you which ones those are.

Good to know

Club admins and team management can import into any team. A team’s manager can import into their own team from the Team Hub: see Importing your squad.
Anyone imported with a guardian is linked to that guardian, exactly as if you’d invited them by hand.