Import TouchBistro history

Moving from TouchBistro? You can bring your sales history into Barform: payments, the item mix, discounts and staff hours. Each imported night then shows on Today, Sales, Income and Labor like any other night. You review everything before it's saved, nothing is created as fake tabs or payments, and an import can be undone. To load your menu, stock items or recipes from a spreadsheet instead, see Import from a spreadsheet.

Who can do this: admins.

Export your reports from TouchBistro

From TouchBistro's cloud reports, export these as Excel files:

• Payments (Detail)
• Product Mix (by item)
• Discounts & Voids (Discount Details)
• Timesheet Details
• Sales by Menu Item

One report split over several date ranges is fine: add every file.

Import the history

1. In the back office, go to Settings › Import and open the TouchBistro history tab.
2. Click Choose Excel files and pick all the files. Each file is listed with what it is — Payments, Item mix, Discounts, Timesheets or Menu groups — and how many rows it has, or "Not a TouchBistro report this can read". To take a file off the list, click its ×.
3. Set TouchBistro's business day started at; it reads 5:00 PM until you change it. "Timesheet Details dates each shift by it."
4. Optional: type TouchBistro's totals for the whole period — Parties, Bills and Seats — from TouchBistro's dashboard. "Its exports have no guest counts, so seats are worked out from these."
5. Read What will be imported: Nights; Sales, with the number of payments and the tips; How guests paid (cash, credit, debit, card); Item sales, with how many items matched your products and how many are new; Discounts; Shifts, with the hours; and every notice under it (see What gets imported).
6. Under Products, each TouchBistro item is matched to one of your products by name. Switch between New products and Matched, search, and change a match by typing another product's name — or clear the field to bring the item in as a New archived product.
7. Under Staff, each TouchBistro name is matched to someone on your staff, or comes in as a new inactive profile, or you choose Leave out. "Anyone not in Barform comes in as an inactive profile with no PIN, so they can't sign in."
8. Under Discount reasons, each reason is listed with its items and amount. To merge two reasons, type the same name in Report as for both. Undo reason changes puts them back.
9. Click Import history. A progress bar runs through each stage, from creating categories, archived products and staff profiles to payments, item sales, discounts and shifts. Keep the page open: a long history can take several minutes.
10. You see "TouchBistro history imported." The import appears under Imports.

TouchBistro's times are read as your venue's local time (Settings › Venue › Timezone), and payments and shifts are placed on Barform's service nights using your service-day start (Settings › Hours & scheduling). See Venue settings.

What gets imported

• Payments — one per payment, on Barform's service night. Tenders become Cash, Credit, Debit or Card; card brands such as Visa or Mastercard count as credit. Refunds come in as negative payments. Left out: house-account charges ("they're paid later, not money taken that night") and payments of $0 with no tip.
• Nights you already have are left out: everything from your first night with a Barform payment on ("Nights from {from} on are left out"), and any night an earlier import already brought in. Loading the same files twice adds nothing.
• Item mix — one row per item per night, linked to your product by name, active or archived. An item you never had becomes an archived product, in the category of its TouchBistro menu group (new archived categories are created as needed). Nights where item sales don't match payments are listed, so you can check them in TouchBistro.
• Discounts — one row per discounted item, with its reason, its bill, who rang it and who approved it. On a bill that took money it counts as a discount; on a bill with no payment, as a comp; on a bill paid only by house account it's kept but not reported. Reasons that differ only in capitals or punctuation are merged for you; a blank reason becomes "No reason given".
• Shifts — become Barform time entries, so they count in Labor. The clock-in lands on its real calendar day (using the business-day start you set), the clock-out after the shift's length, and the unpaid break in the middle of the shift. Left out: punches under 15 minutes, shifts with no clock-out, and shifts that overlap one the person already has. A shift that overlaps the next one is cut to end when the next one starts. Shifts of 16 hours or more are listed — usually a missed clock-out: fix them in TouchBistro and export again, or import them as they are.
• Guests — TouchBistro exports no guest counts. If you typed the totals, each night's guests are its parties times TouchBistro's seats per party ("About {ratio} seats per party"). Without them, imported nights have no guests, and Per guest leaves their sales out.
• In the reports, imported nights count exactly like Barform nights: bills are payments taken, parties are the parties that paid, credit and debit sit under card, and VAT is worked out from the price at your venue's rate, since TouchBistro exports none. Nothing on screen marks a night as imported.

Other notices you may see:

• A file with exactly 10,000 rows — TouchBistro's export limit — gets a warning that it may have stopped early. If other files cover the rest of its dates, nothing is missing; if not, export the rest as shorter date ranges and add them.
• Rows TouchBistro split across columns are put back together, and rows that can't be read are left out. Both are counted in the notices.
• "Nothing new to import." — every night in the files is already in Barform.

Undo an import

1. Under Imports, find the import. It shows when it was made and by whom, with its sales and payments.
2. Click Undo. The dialog asks "Undo this import?": "Its nights leave the dashboard and the reports. The archived products and categories and the inactive staff it created are deleted too, unless something has used them since."
3. Click Undo import.
4. You see "Import undone." — or "Import undone. Some of what it created is kept because it has been used since ({count})."

Something counts as used if, for example, a product it created has been sold or given a recipe or modifiers, or a staff profile it created has been given a sign-in, a PIN, a schedule, a clock-in or a sale.

If an import stops partway

You see "The import stopped partway." Whatever was saved is taken back out: "Nothing from it was kept. Fix the problem and import again." If that clean-up also fails, the import is listed under Imports as Interrupted, with a Remove button: remove it, then import again.

After the import

• Archived products appear in Menu › Products under Archived. See Products and categories.
• Imported staff profiles are inactive and have no PIN. If that person still works for you, activate them in Team › Staff and give them a PIN. See Staff and roles.

Related

• Import from a spreadsheet
• Today
• Sales
• Income
• Labor report