Best Practices: Submittal Imports

Why should I use Submittal Imports?

You can add many details to the submittal items at the creation time by utilizing an XLSX or CSV spreadsheet and the Procore Imports application. Duplicating data across multiple items is much more efficient to do within a spreadsheet compared to adding the data individually for each submittal item.

Before you Begin

• Ensure the user or users assigned as Submittal Manager have been added to the project's Directory tool. See Add a User Account to the Project Directory.
• If you will be assigning another company as the 'Responsible Contractor' for one or more submittals, ensure that each company has been added to the project's Directory tool. See Add a Company to the Project Directory.
• If your project is using locations and you want to add location information to your submittals, the location tiers must already exist in Procore. See Add Tiered Locations to a Project.
• If your company is using the project's Specifications tool to manage specs, upload the project specs to Procore (see Upload Specifications) or manually add them to Procore.
• If you will be using the Submittal Schedule Calculations feature, be sure to enable it within the project's Submittals configuration settings prior to import. See Enable Submittal Schedule Calculations.

Best Practices

• Do not delete or move any columns in the template. Doing so will cause the import to fail. You can, however, hide any unused columns.
• Submittal Imports can only be used to create new submittals, not to update existing ones.
• All date formats must be entered using the date format MM/DD/YYYY, regardless of the project’s settings. Other fields, such as Spec Section Number, can be formatted as needed.
• For most fields referencing existing data in Procore, the data entered on the import must match exactly what is in Procore. Otherwise, the import will display an error message or create unwanted new records.
• If you prefer to number submittals as you receive them, you can leave the Submittal Number cells blank or add the number 0 to all of them. 
• Completed import templates do not need to be unique for each project. If you consistently create the same or similar submittal items for each project, you can create a master template to duplicate and edit as needed for each new project. This can act as a template submittal registry and will save you considerable time on future projects. 
• There are no limits to the number of submittal imports you can perform on a project. It might be useful to separate the imports by priority for large projects. 
• Submittal Packages (Columns A-D in the template) are not required but highly recommended. See Best Practices: Submittal Packages - Introduction for more information.
• Submittal Schedule Calculation fields (Columns R-U in the template) are highly recommended to help you understand whether your submittals are on target. See Best Practices: Submittal Project Configurations for more information.

See Prepare Submittals for Import to the Procore Imports App for additional information.

Submittal Imports Compared to Submittal Builder

Procore's Submittal Imports and Submittal Builder are the two most efficient methods to create a Submittal Registry, but they should not be used in tandem. The lists below show advantages and disadvantages for each option to help you determine which is the best choice for your projects.