How to Import Your Student List From Excel, Step by Step

You have finally decided to move off the register, and then you open the Excel file. There are four tabs, one per batch, phone numbers written three different ways, and a fees column that says "paid", "1500" and "pd June". Retyping 80 students into new software is a weekend you do not have, and it is the main reason studios put the switch off for another year.

How do you import a student list from Excel into studio software?

Save your sheet as Excel or CSV, upload it, match each column to a field such as Name, Phone or Batch, review the rows, then import. Good studio software reads your own column headers instead of forcing a template, and shows every row before saving, so a bad phone number never quietly becomes a bad record.

In StudioPartner the importer sits under Students, then Import. Any Excel file (.xlsx or .xls) or CSV works, including a Google Sheets download. It matches headers like "Mobile No." to Phone and "Student Name" to Name, tells you how many it matched, and lets you change any that look wrong. The full walkthrough is in our help page on importing students from a sheet.

Import works on every plan, including the free plan for up to 30 students. If you would rather not touch the file at all, email it to us and the team will load your list for free.

How do you clean a student sheet before importing it?

Put every student on one tab with one header row, one student per row and one kind of information per column. Remove students who have left, merge duplicates, write phone numbers as plain 10-digit mobiles and make joining dates real dates. Twenty minutes of cleaning in Excel saves hours of fixing records after the import.

Work through the sheet in this order:

1. Merge the tabs. If you keep one tab per batch, copy everyone into a single tab and add a "Batch" column instead.
2. Remove leavers. Students who left last year only clutter your lists. Delete them, or import them and move them to archived students afterwards.
3. Fix duplicates. A child enrolled in two batches should be one row with one phone number, not two students.
4. Clean the phone column. Drop spaces, dashes and the leading 0 or +91, so every mobile is the same 10 digits.
5. Check the dates. Decide on day-month-year and use it everywhere, so 04/05/2026 cannot be read as 5 April when you meant 4 May.

The phone column causes the most trouble. Microsoft's own guidance says Excel automatically removes leading zeros, converts large numbers to scientific notation and keeps a maximum of 15 significant digits. Format the phone column as Text before you paste numbers in, and check a few rows to make sure the full number is still there.

Which columns should a student import sheet have?

At minimum, a name and a phone number for every student. After that, the useful columns are batch, fee plan, amount paid, amount due and joining date, with email, gender and date of birth as extras. Leave out serial numbers, colour codes and notes columns. The importer only needs information it can store against a student.

If your batch names are messy, tidy them in the sheet first. It is also a good moment to rethink the timetable itself, as we explain in our guide to scheduling dance class batches.

What happens to batches, plans and fees during the import?

Batches and plans named in your sheet can be matched to ones you already have or created on the way in. Paid and due amounts become one fee per new student, counted from the joining date. Students already in the system are skipped or have their details updated, and their fees are never changed from a sheet.

Here is how we would bring in a studio that keeps one tab per batch: Bharatanatyam beginners, juniors, seniors and a weekend adult batch. After merging the tabs, we upload the file, and the review screen shows four batches that do not exist yet. We choose Create for each, then set their days and times in creating a batch.

The plan column works the same way. A "Monthly 1500" plan that does not exist can be created by entering its price and length in months, or the fee can be recorded without a plan. The membership plans page explains what each plan controls once it is in.

Fees need one more answer from you: how the money was received. You pick cash, UPI or bank transfer, and every payment from the sheet is recorded that way. Nothing is dated by guesswork, so a student with money paid but no joining date gets a date from you, or comes in without fees. From then on, dues live in fee management instead of a column you update by hand.

The import is never the hard part. The sheet is. Clean it once and the switch stops being a weekend job.

What should you check after importing your students?

Compare three numbers with your old sheet: total students, students in each batch and the total amount due. Then open five students at random and check the phone, batch and fee. If something is off, fix it in the sheet and import again. Students already brought in are skipped, so nothing is doubled.

The done screen lists anyone who was skipped or could not be saved, so you can go back to those rows. Rows with a pending fix, such as a nine-digit phone number, stay out until you correct them.

Then use the new system straight away. Mark the first class in attendance tracking and record the next payment against the student, not in the old file. If you keep updating both for a month, the spreadsheet wins by habit, which is the trap we describe in tracking studio fees without spreadsheets. The fee statuses guide explains what Pending, Partial, Paid and Overdue mean on the new screen.

FAQs

Can I import students from Google Sheets?

Yes. In Google Sheets, use File, then Download, and choose Microsoft Excel or CSV. Upload that file to the importer as you would any Excel sheet. Before downloading, check the phone column is plain text and the dates are in one format, because the same Excel rules apply once the file is opened or saved again.

Do I need a special template to import my student list?

Not in StudioPartner. The importer reads your own headers and matches them to its fields, and you can correct any match before moving on. If you are starting a sheet from scratch, there is a blank sheet you can download, but most studios simply upload the register they already keep and fix a few columns.

What if I import the same sheet twice?

Nothing is doubled. Students with the same name and phone as someone already in your list are either skipped or have their name, batch and joining date updated, whichever you choose. Status and fees are never changed from a sheet. If the same student appears twice in one sheet, the first row counts.

Should I import students who have already left?

Usually not. A clean list of current students makes your dues and attendance numbers honest from day one. If you want their history kept, import them and archive them afterwards. Our import and export guide covers what to check before a large import, including duplicates and joining dates.

What to do first

Open your register this week and merge every batch into one tab with a name, phone, batch and joining date for each student. Then start a 14-day trial and run the import, or email us the file and we will load it for you. If you are still deciding whether to switch at all, read software vs spreadsheets or whether studio software is worth it.