By Alpit Patel and the aibrevo team · October 22, 2026 · 7 min read
How Do You Import Contacts into Follow Up Boss?
Quick answer
In Follow Up Boss, go to Admin, then Import, click Import Your Contacts, choose a CSV, confirm opt-in consent, map your columns and start the import. Each lead takes up to 6 phones, 6 emails and 6 addresses, and an import can be deleted for 14 days.
Key takeaways
- Follow Up Boss imports from a CSV file only. The path is Admin > Import > Import Your Contacts, then choose the file, confirm opt-in consent, map columns, set a default agent and stage if needed, and start (help center article last updated Jul 15, 2025, checked Oct 22, 2026).
- One lead can carry up to 6 phone numbers, 6 email addresses, 6 mailing addresses and 6 relationships. Your own Follow Up Boss login email or connected email address must not be in the file, because it can make the import fail.
- Existing contacts are merged, not duplicated: when the email matches, or when the phone number and the name both match, Follow Up Boss combines the contact info. Added info on an updated contact stays even if you delete the import.
- Tasks, appointments, deals and collaborators cannot be imported. Deleting a whole import is available for 14 days from Admin > Import > View Past Imports.
- If the file is messy, Follow Up Boss will import it for you when you email the CSV to imports@followupboss.com, which also means you confirm the contacts already consented to be contacted.
Follow Up Boss imports contacts from a CSV file through Admin > Import > Import Your Contacts. You choose the file, confirm opt-in consent, map your columns to Follow Up Boss fields, pick a default agent and stage, and start. One lead can take up to 6 phone numbers, 6 emails, 6 addresses and 6 relationships, and a bad import can be deleted for 14 days.
This page covers the steps, the column rules, how duplicates are matched, what cannot be imported and what goes wrong most often. Everything comes from Follow Up Boss’s help center, read on October 22, 2026 (the import article shows an update date of July 15, 2025, so menu names could have moved since).
How do you import contacts into Follow Up Boss step by step?
Open Admin > Import and click Import Your Contacts. The steps below follow Follow Up Boss’s import overview.
- Choose your CSV file and click Open.
- Confirm opt-in consent by selecting Yes, I Confirm. The help center ties this to the FCC’s TCPA rules: there must be opt-in consent before calling or texting a number.
- Map fields. The top row shows the header from your file, and you match the second row to a Follow Up Boss field.
- Click Save & Continue.
- Choose an Assigned Agent and Stage for the import if the file does not specify them, add optional tags, and start the import.
Two details change what you get. The default agent and stage apply only to contacts the import creates, never to contacts that already exist. And the tags you add apply to every contact in the file, new and existing, which makes a tag such as “Import Oct 2026” a cheap way to find everything the file touched.
What columns can you import, and what are the limits?
Follow Up Boss reads standard contact fields plus notes, tags and custom fields. The limits below are from the same article.
| Data | What the help center says | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Name | One Name column, or First Name and Last Name | none stated |
| Phones | One column per number if you want number types | 6 per lead |
| Emails | Each address needs its own column, with an “Email- Type” column before it, to keep labels such as home or work | 6 per lead |
| Mailing addresses | Street, City, State, Zip columns, with an “Address- Type” column for a label | 6 per lead |
| Date added | Becomes the created date and can be in the past | none stated |
| Lead source | If no column is mapped, “Import” is used | none stated |
| Assigned agent, lender, stage | Also written as tags such as “Imported Agent: Jane Doe” | stages are never created by import |
| Tags | Comma, semicolon or pipe separated, several columns allowed | none stated |
| Custom fields | A new one can be created by the import; text, number (whole numbers only), date (MM/DD/YY or MM/DD/YYYY) or drop-down | existing field data is overwritten for existing contacts |
| Relationships | First name, last name, type, phone, email and address per relationship | 6 per contact |
| Property address | Adds an Inquiry event to the timeline, not contact info | see the fixes table |
Source: Follow Up Boss Help Center, “Importing Contacts Overview”, checked Oct 22, 2026.
If a phone or email cell holds several values separated by a pipe character or a new line, Follow Up Boss imports them as separate numbers or addresses on the profile. Avoid special characters such as #, $, @ and ! in custom field data, which the article says can hurt system performance. Build the file with the CRM import file checker first if it came from several spreadsheets, and see CRM import limits compared for how other systems cap the same things.
How does Follow Up Boss handle duplicate contacts on import?
It merges by rule instead of creating a second record. Follow Up Boss combines contact info if the email address matches, or if the phone number and the name both match. A matched contact is not duplicated.
The Past Imports screen then reports four counts per file:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Added | New contacts created |
| Updated | Existing contacts that received new information |
| Duplicate | Contacts listed more than once in the file that carried no new information |
| Imported By | The user who ran it |
The warning to act on: if an import updates contacts that already exist, the added info on those contacts cannot be removed, even if you delete the import. Deleting removes the new contacts, and the 14-day window to do it is the only built-in undo. A phone number match without a name match is not a documented merge rule, so two relatives who share a number can stay separate.
Why did my Follow Up Boss import fail or look wrong?
Match the symptom to the cause the help center gives.
| What you see | Documented cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Import fails | Your Follow Up Boss login email or connected email address is in the file | Remove that address from the CSV and import again |
| Contacts have an “Imported Agent: Name” tag and are not assigned | The agent name does not match the Follow Up Boss agent name exactly | Fix names in the file, or use mass actions to assign by the tag |
| Contacts have an “Imported Stage: Name” tag | The stage in the file does not match an existing stage | Have the account owner create the stage, then mass-update by tag |
| Every imported contact shows a recent activity or inquiry | The Property address fields were mapped, which creates an inquiry event | Delete the imported contacts and re-import with Property address unmapped |
| You cannot see all the contacts when you click the count on Past Imports | Some were assigned to another user | Ask the account owner or an admin |
| Email labels such as home and work are lost | The Email- Type column is missing before each email column | Add the type columns and re-import |
| Custom field values changed on existing contacts | An import overwrites custom field data for existing contacts | Map to a new custom field first, compare, then decide |
| Several phone numbers sit in one cell and came in as one | They were not separated by a pipe or a new line | Split with a pipe or a line break |
Source: Follow Up Boss Help Center, “Importing Contacts Overview”, checked Oct 22, 2026. The fix column is our reading of the article’s notes, not a Follow Up Boss instruction.
The same article explains how to send an import to a pond: import with a pond-name tag, filter People by that tag afterward and use mass actions to move the leads to the pond.
What can’t you import into Follow Up Boss?
Collaborators, tasks, appointments and deals cannot be imported. The help center’s workaround for collaborators such as a listing agent is a custom field, followed by mass actions to assign them.
That matters most when you move from another real estate CRM. Deals and tasks from the old system need a separate plan, such as keeping a read-only export, recreating open deals by hand, or choosing a platform that can carry them. How to export contacts from Follow Up Boss covers the opposite direction, and how to cancel Follow Up Boss lists what to do before you leave. Follow Up Boss also publishes source-specific guides for Top Producer, Liondesk, Copper, Firepoint and iPhone contacts, and a Contactually guide that recommends mapping buckets to tags (we read the Top Producer guide only). If you are weighing Follow Up Boss against a general CRM, HubSpot for real estate compares the cost at team sizes.
Can Follow Up Boss import contacts for you?
Yes. Email a CSV of your contacts to imports@followupboss.com and the Follow Up Boss team will import it. By sending a file you acknowledge that the contacts in it have previously consented to be contacted by you, so do not send a purchased or scraped list.
When to get help
A few hundred clean contacts is a ten-minute import. Get help when the source is a messy export from another CRM, when several teams’ agents and stages must map correctly, or when you are moving people, deals and tasks together and Follow Up Boss cannot take the deals. aibrevo implements Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, monday.com, Airtable and GoHighLevel, and quotes Follow Up Boss work per project, since migration into one of those eight is the common request. You can book a short call or send a message, and the GoHighLevel service page and HubSpot service page show how those builds run.
Sources
- Follow Up Boss Help Center, Importing Contacts Overview, checked Oct 22, 2026.
- Follow Up Boss Help Center, Importing Contacts from Top Producer, checked Oct 22, 2026.