Importing your portfolio
You load PMFriend from spreadsheets: six small CSV files, uploaded on the Import page, top to bottom. No spreadsheet? Import from the contracts themselves (PDF or photo). Every card has a Download sample CSV button — fill that template from your PMS, ERP or Excel export.
| # | File | What it carries | Found by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Properties (+ owners) | address, type, owner-approval limit, owner name / email / mobile, handover date, pool (yes / no) | — |
| 2 | Tenants | name, email, mobile | — |
| 3 | Contractors | business name, trades, email, mobile, insurance expiry | — |
| 4 | Leases | who lives where: start / end date, rent, payment frequency, security deposit | unit by address, tenant by email or mobile |
| 5 | Equipment | chillers, lifts, pumps, AC units: type, label, location, make, model, serial | property by address |
| 6 | Certificate register | when each certificate is really due, per building | property by address |
The column names are fixed — keep the header row of the sample. Your PMS export will need its columns renamed to match; there is no mapping screen.
Safe to upload twice
Uploading the same file again changes nothing: a unit already at that address, a tenant already known by email or mobile, a contractor with the same business name, a lease on the same unit with the same start date, the same equipment label at the same location — all come back as already there. One exception: a filled-in pool column also updates a unit that is already there, so you can answer the pool question for your whole portfolio by uploading the file again. A certificate row with a different date updates the open obligation. So you can fix three bad rows and upload the whole file again.
A bad row never stops the file. You get the line number and the reason ("no property at 'Tower 9, Apt 1'…", "end_date is before start_date"); the other rows still land.
The things that matter most
- Tenant mobiles in international format (
+974 5533 0301). A WhatsApp message finds its tenant by the mobile number. PMFriend tolerates spaces and a missing country code, but one number per tenant, and the number they actually use on WhatsApp. - Leases. Without a lease PMFriend doesn't know which unit a tenant's message is about, and the lease deadlines (Qatar: registration within 30 days, deposit return) never start. With the leases file they start on their own, exactly as if you had entered each lease by hand.
- Existing leases don't arrive as alarms. Most leases in a running portfolio were registered long ago.
Put the date in
registered_onand PMFriend records the registration as done; writenoif you know it is missing, and the deadline counts. Leave it blank on an older lease and PMFriend raises nothing — the 30-day clock is for leases you record from now on. - Rent paid to (optional). A
paid_todate in the leases file records the date rent is paid up to, copied from your PMS. From 7 days behind that lease shows on the Attention inbox. Leave it blank and PMFriend tracks nothing: it never sees payments. - Buildings. Add a
buildingcolumn (the tower or compound's name) and, optionally,floor(0 = ground) to the properties file. Units are grouped under Buildings, and an upload of the same file groups units that are already there. Building-level things, such as the chiller, the lifts and the QCDD certificate, belong to the building rather than to one apartment. Add one row per building (for exampleTower 4 (building)) withcommon_areas=yes, and point equipment and certificates at it. Its lifts and chiller can then be linked to any unit's request. - Amounts are whole cents in your currency:
850000is 8,500.00. This is the same in the export, so an exported file imports back unchanged. - Dates are ISO:
2026-09-01.
Where do certificate dates come from?
From you. PMFriend knows the rule (a QCDD certificate is annual, lifts are certified yearly) but not when your certificate expires. The certificate register file gives it the real due date per building. If you skip the file and press Generate for property on the Compliance page instead, PMFriend assumes the cycle starts today — fine for a demo, wrong for a live building.
Lease deadlines are the exception: they are calculated from the lease dates.
What's not imported
- Accounting — ledgers, receipts, owner statements stay in your PMS / ERP.
- Documents — upload them on the property or lease page.
- History — past tenants and closed jobs. Start from today's state.
How long it takes
A tower of 200–300 units: about fifteen minutes of uploading once the six files are ready. Getting the files ready is the real work — see the onboarding checklist.