Open Business › Contacts and click Import Contacts. Choose the XML client export file and click Import; Exacc updates contacts it already has and adds the rest, then shows New Records and Updates. Import is not working at the moment: add contacts one at a time until it is fixed.
1. Open Import contacts from file
Open Business › Contacts and click Import Contacts.
2. Choose the file and import
Click Select file (or drag the file in) and click Import. Clear removes the file.
The file must be an XML client export with one <Entity> record per client, as tax practice software exports them. CSV and Excel files are offered by the file picker but cannot be imported.
3. Check the results
Import Results shows how many New Records were added and how many Updates were made, with an Import Report of anything skipped. A contact that already exists (matched by its ID from the file) is updated; a new contact whose code is already used is skipped.
Imported contacts are customers. Change the Type of any supplier afterwards.
Import is not working at the moment
The import currently stops with no message on screen. Until it is fixed, add contacts with New Contact (see Add or edit a contact), or ask us to load them for you.
Related guides
Checked against Exacc on 4 October 2026. Machine-readable version