From Excel to vitaFleet: a data migration guide

The biggest fear of moving to a new system is not technical but human: the fear of having to enter everything from the beginning. Thinking about years of accumulated vehicle lists, service history and statements, most teams postpone the move. vitaFleet puts import first in order to remove this step as much as possible.

The logic: upload, map, preview, confirm

Import is four steps. You upload the Excel (xlsx) or CSV file; the first row must be a header. You map each column in the file to a field in the system; similar names are matched automatically. In the preview, faulty rows are shown with their reasons and only valid rows are imported. When you confirm, the records appear in the list.

The good side of this flow is that it shows errors from the start. Data doesn't enter the system dirty; a broken row meets you as a warning in the preview.

Turkish formats are read correctly

Dates are read correctly as dd.mm.yyyy, amounts with a decimal comma (1.250,50). Fields such as plate and tax ID number (VKN) are recognized even when written with spaces. This is a detail that always causes problems in files in Türkiye: a wrong decimal separator can change an amount or a quantity of liters a hundredfold.

Vehicle list first

The first thing to move is your vehicle list. You import your existing file and map the columns once: plate, chassis, brand, model, year and any technical fields you like fall into place. Fields such as vehicle type, group and ownership can also be corrected later with bulk updates.

Groups and people in charge

Vehicles are divided into branch, site or department groups. You filter lists and reports by these groups. If group information is also available in the first migration, mapping it makes all later reports more meaningful.

Then history and statements

Once the vehicles are in place, it is time for the history. What can be moved with the same logic:

• Fuel exports and past fill-up records.
• HGS/OGS statements.
• UTTS statements.
• Past service and maintenance records.

Import is not a one-time job. You keep moving monthly statements in the same way; so the step you learn is useful every month.

Reducing manual entry with integrations

For some data you may not need to move files at all. GPS and telematics, fuel card and e-invoice integrations pull the data directly. For example, the GPS integration transfers a vehicle's location and mileage automatically; fuel card transactions turn into fuel records. Moving by file is for systems without integrations and for historical data.

What happens after you enter the data

The real value begins after the data is in. Every new record (service, fuel, inspection, fault) starts accumulating on the same vehicle, and your fleet's history forms in one place. After a few months, you have a real history and real reports built on it.

A checklist before moving

• Is the first row of the file a header?
• Are the plates written consistently?
• Are the date and amount columns in a single format?
• Are there rows where the same vehicle is written twice?
• Which columns are really needed?

Preparing your source file

Import catches dirty data but takes clean data much faster. Three cleanups are enough before uploading the file. Make it a single table: files spread across tabs, with merged cells or blank rows in between cause problems. Make the first row a header: column names are used for matching to fields in the system. Write the same concept in the same format: if one column has both '34ABC123' and '34 ABC 123', it is recognized but readability drops.

What you see in the preview

After upload, the preview screen checks the rows. Rows with an invalid date, an empty required field or an unrecognized value are listed with their reasons; valid rows are ready to be imported. At this stage, going back to fix the file or leaving the faulty rows and continuing is your choice. What matters is that nothing enters the record without your approval.

A migration plan

First week: vehicles and basic data

Import the vehicle list and its groups, define document expiry dates and maintenance intervals. The goal this week is not perfect data but building a working skeleton.

Second week: history and statements

Move the fuel, toll and service history; connect integrations. The data you need to enter by hand starts to shrink.

Third week: parallel running

While continuing to keep your old spreadsheet, take reports from the new system and compare the two sources. After closing the differences, set a freeze date on the Excel file: saying 'this file won't be updated after this date' is the most important decision of the migration.

Bringing the team into the migration

Once the system is set up, everyone works in the same place; but what everyone needs to see is not the same. Users see according to their role; every change is written to the activity log and who changed what is clear. Making the vehicle's person in charge a watcher ensures notifications go to the right person. The learn buttons inside screens give a short usage explanation of each page; in the first week the team solves most of its questions from here.

Common mistakes

• Uploading the file without cleaning it; seeing hundreds of errors in the preview.
• Not closing the old file; having two separate truths in two places.
• Trying to move everything at once; it is healthier to settle the vehicle list first.
• Moving data that has an integration by file; GPS and fuel card data arrive on their own anyway.
• Switching without telling the team.

First reports after the migration

After the data is in, your first job should be setting up the lists your own way. In lists, column selection, advanced filters, saved view tabs and bulk actions work in the same layout. You save the slices you look at often as tabs: vehicles with upcoming maintenance, vehicles whose documents are about to expire, those with an open fault. Starting directly from there every morning replaces wandering among scattered files. After that, you can open the cost and compliance reports from the ready-made reports and review the first month's figures.

Spending half an hour on these five questions is far cheaper than spending hours on corrections after the migration. If you like, we can do this import together during the initial setup; you only verify the result.