# Importing customers
> **Note:**
> 👋 **This article is part of our Getting Started guides.** If you are new to Breww and have found this guide without first reading our [Getting Started Guide](https://breww.com/docs/getting-started-guide/), you will want to head there first. Not new to Breww? 🚀 This guide might not be quite right for you as it is aimed at your initial setup.
You will now be able to import your customers into Breww, where you can store all the essential information surrounding your customers. Breww allows you to manage your customer accounts and sales with ease, as well as also group your customers. As you start using the **Customers** section in Breww, you will be able to log your CRM activity and sales data.
## Parent companies
Before importing your customers into Breww, we recommend creating your parent companies. Parent companies can be used as a 'group account' to group multiple individual customers (e.g. pubs) under a single billing entity (a parent company for the pubs). You can either enter these manually by heading to **Customers**->**View**-> **Parent companies**, or, if you have a larger number of parent companies, you will be able to do this by heading to **Settings**->**Data import and updates**->**Parent Companies**.
## Importing your customers
There are three ways that you can bring in your customers into Breww:
1. The **Customers and contacts** importer
2. From your **Accountancy package**
3. Create them **individually**
### 1. Customers and contacts importer
If you have your customer data in a spreadsheet, we recommend using our importer tool to bring your customers into Breww. Here, you can import your customer details in bulk and assign a price book to their account, as well as state a parent company (if applicable).
### Customer tags
One of the fields on this import is **Tags**. Any unique customer tags can be created and imported here, but there are three pre-existing system tags that you can assign here, too. These are:
* Receives delivery note emails
* Receives delivery notifications
* Receives invoice emails
If you would like these fields to apply to the customers you are importing, then these can be added. If you don't want the customer to receive the notifications/ documents listed above, then this can be left blank.
### Preferred contact times
If you know when your customers like to be contacted, fill in the **Preferred contact days**, **Preferred contact from** and **Preferred contact until** columns. Days are the weekday names separated by commas, such as `Tuesday, Thursday`, and the times can be given on a 24 hour clock (`17:30`) or with am/pm (`5:30pm`). All three can be left blank. See [Preferred contact times for customers and leads](https://breww.com/docs/customer-preferred-contact-time/) for how Breww uses them.
### Custom fields
Any [custom fields](https://breww.com/docs/customer-lead-and-supplier-custom-fields/) you have set up for customers appear as columns on the importer too. For a multiple choice field that allows more than one selection, separate the option names with commas.
### Contacts
When importing your customers, you can also import/set the primary contact for the customer. This also allows you to tag the contact in the same way described above, and means you can have emails/notifications sent to two separate sets of contact details; the organisation details and the individual contact. If you have multiple contacts for a customer, then there is an optional importer that you can complete following the main import of your customers and primary contact.
You can bring your customers and primary contact into Breww via the importer by heading to **Settings**->**Data imports and updates**->**Customers**, under **Bulk add new data,** and following the [Data import guide](https://breww.com/docs/data-import-guide/).
If you would like to import more contacts following this import, you can then go to **Settings**->**Data imports and updates**->**Contact people (of customers/suppliers)**.
### 2. Bring in your customers from your accountancy package
If your customers are already in your accountancy software (such as Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage Accounting), you can import them directly into Breww without preparing a spreadsheet. This has the added advantage of mapping each customer to its record in your accountancy software as it's imported, so Breww won't create duplicates there when it uploads invoices.
First, connect your accountancy software by following the [Accountancy](https://breww.com/docs/accountancy/) guide. You don't need to enable syncing before importing. Then:
1. Go to **Integrations** → **Accountancy** and, next to your accountancy provider, select **Actions** → **Configuration**.
2. In the **Data import & mapping** section, click **Map and download customers**.
3. Click **Import all unmapped** to import all of your customers in one go, or Import from [software] to Breww on a row to import a single customer.
For more on how duplicates are avoided and what is brought across, see [Importing customers and suppliers from your accountancy software](https://breww.com/docs/accountancy/#importing-customers-and-suppliers-from-your-accountancy-software).
Your accountancy software doesn't hold Breww-specific details, such as the customer's price book, so after importing you'll need to use the **bulk updater** to set these. You can do this by following the [Bulk updating data](https://breww.com/docs/bulk-updating-data/) help article.
> **Warning:**
> If you are not bringing your customers into Breww through your accountancy software, you can skip the step of setting up your accountancy integration for now, as this will be covered later in the getting started guide.
### 3. Creating your customers individually
You can alternatively create your customers individually (like you'd likely do going forward) by heading to **Customers**->**New customer**.
> **Note:**
> **Just getting started with Breww?** The next guide is [Creating containers](https://breww.com/docs/creating-containers/) or you can return to the [Getting Started Guide](https://breww.com/docs/getting-started-guide/).