Patron Imports - How to do a Patron Import?

If you are unsure about how meal plans work in our system or want to give a student a bundle of meal plans (ex: 10 meal units and $50 Dining Dollars) but don't know how to please read this first:

Our meal plan system doesn't work in bundles as it may in other systems (example: John Doe has the Senior Plan II), instead, each piece of the meal plan is its own building block. For example, Senior Plan II may have had ID # 45 in another system. In FIIT you would not say John Does has meal plan ID #45.

If the Senior Meal Plan II came with 50 meal swipes and $175 dining dollars then instead, would create a seperate "meal plan" for both the 50 meal swipes and the $175 DCB. You can name these whatever you want including "Senior Plan II $175 DCB" and "Senior Plan II 50 Meal Units".

It would then look something like this:
"Senior Plan II $175 DCB" meal plan id = 12
"Senior Plan II 50 Meal Units" meal plan id=13
The way this would look in the import is as follows

Name :John Doe
Meal Plan IDS: 12, 13

The way some have done did this is that they put together the file using all their current meal plan IDs then did a very simple "Find and Replace" function in Excel.

For example, find all numbers equal to 45 in the meal plan ID column and replace the number 45 with " 12, 13"

How to do a Manual Patron Import

1) Log into FIIT

2) Select Patrons

3) Click on the gear icon in the top left hand corner that is situated under the word "Patrons"

4) Select Export (Omit this step if this is your first time importing patrons and you have no one in the system)

5) Add any brand new students to this file, all existing students will already be in it.

6) Make changes to the meal plans as you wish and then make sure you save the file as a ".csv" file.
Note: Home Town, Home Country, Major, Athlete, AhtleteSport, and dorm are not mandatory changes.

7) Click on the gear icon again and this time press "Import"

8) Attach the file you wish to import

9) Select the rules you want to be applied to be applied to each meal plan. This is incredibly important. Please ensure that if the balance is being transferred from one meal plan to another that you indicate this in the window. This is relevant for both sides of the screen (Setup Meal Plan Adjustment Rule and Remaining Meal Plan Rules).

A description of the three rules we offer can be found below:

Transfer: Transfers the balance from the old meal plan to the new meal plan

Deduct: Deducts whatever was spent on the old meal plan from the new meal plan

Archive: Archive the old meal plan completed and start with a brand new balance from the new meal plan.

Please note that this is only if you are transferring students from one meal plan to another, if this is a first time import disregard this step.

Critical instructions when working on the CSV file:

If a student has no new meal plans, do not remove any meal plans from the meal plan ID column. Leaving the meal plan ID column blank will cause that patron to be stripped of all of their meal plans. If there are no changes to their meal plans either leave the information the same or remove them from the import.
The meal plan IDs are found in FIIT, to locate them go to the Meal Plan tab on the FIIT home page, once on this page the meal plans will be listed. The meal plan IDs are found on the left hand side of the screen across from each meal plan.
Make sure you don't delete or edit any of the column names.
For the column that asks for status, 0 means active while 1 and 2 mean the patrons have to contact financial aid or food services when they try and use their card.
The patron key would be the barcode/prox number while the student ID is the Patron company key.
If it is a first time important and you are importing students for the first time, leave the Patron ID column blank and it will be auto generated when you do the import. If students already exist in the system please do an export first and the patron ID will populate
For your company ID, please reach out to Nōwn for this information if you are doing a first time import. If you already have patrons in the system then please do an export and the company ID will automatically populate there.
You can add multiple meal plans per person, you are not limited to one meal plan a patron. Please make sure you seperate each meal plan ID with a comma (example: 436, 289, 209).