Importing data from Excel or another program

Anyone who switches brings legacy data along. Without an import, the business starts from zero — and ends up staying with the old provider. That is why Zeitflex has its own import assistant.

What can be imported

Four data types, each on its own:

File formats: .xlsx and CSV/TSV. Zeitflex does not read old .xls files, .xlsb or password-protected workbooks — save them once as .xlsx in Excel.

Step by step

1. Open Import on the left.
2. Choose the data type and upload the file. For Excel workbooks with several sheets, also choose the worksheet.
3. Check the column mapping. Zeitflex recognises German and English column names automatically and shows how certain it is. Whatever does not fit, you change using the drop-down.
4. Look at the preview. The first records are shown live as they would arrive.
5. Start dry run. Nothing is saved. You see beforehand how many records would be created, updated and skipped — each with a reason per row.
6. Only when the dry run is clean: run the import.

The result: The data is in Zeitflex, the import appears in the import history, and you can undo it with one click.

The dry run is the real point

An import without a preview is a leap with your eyes blindfolded. The dry run answers beforehand the three questions that hurt afterwards:

• Will someone be created twice because their personnel number is written differently?
• Do the hours land on the right day, or has Excel turned the date column into a number?
• Is someone missing an hourly wage, so that the labour costs later have gaps?

Faulty rows

Rows that do not go through can be downloaded as a CSV. The file contains the original columns plus a Problem column. You correct them in Excel and upload exactly this file again — the mapping is the same.

Undoing an import

Every import remembers what it created. Via Import → History → Undo you roll back the most recent import per data type completely.

Limits you should know

• 5,000 rows per run, at most 12 MB per file. Split larger datasets into several files.
• There is no interface to other providers. The route is always: export there, upload here.
• Hours without a time of day (only date and number of hours) are placed at 08:00. The daily total is correct; the position within the day is set. Zeitflex points this out.
• The import checks, but it does not heal. It warns about hourly wages below the minimum wage and about dates in the future — but it does not make legacy data legally compliant.

German formats are understood

15.01.2026, 8:30, 8,5 hours, 1.234,56 € — all of this arrives correctly. Umlauts from German Excel exports (Windows-1252) are also recognised, and names that are already garbled such as “Müller” are repaired by Zeitflex when reading them in.

Still stuck?

In the assistant, download the sample file for the data type in question, enter three rows and use it to test the dry run. If that works, the problem is the file — and you will immediately see which column.