Tutorials · Getting started
Import your book into BrokerDam
How to bring your existing contacts and historical deals across from another system, and how imported records reconcile with later Velocity syncs. Time required: most of the work is the export from your old system.
Export your book from your current system
Start where your data lives today — your existing CRM, Velocity, or a spreadsheet you've been maintaining. Export it as a file. Export contacts and deals separately if the system lets you; they come into BrokerDam through separate imports.
Include everything you'd want to search later: names, email addresses, phone numbers, loan numbers, and whatever dates and amounts you keep on closed files. It's much less work to import a wide export once than to go back for missing columns.
Clean the file before you import it
Spend a few minutes on the export before uploading. Delete rows you don't want carried over, make sure phone numbers and dates are formatted consistently, and confirm every deal row has its loan number. Loan numbers matter more than anything else here — see the dedupe step below.
Import contacts
In BrokerDam, open the Contacts page and use its import to upload the contacts file. Match the columns from your export to BrokerDam's fields, then run the import. Doing contacts first means the deals you import next have people to attach to.
Import deals
Do the same on the Deals page with your deals export. This is also how you get history that the Velocity API can't reach: the API covers your recent book, so anything older comes in as a file import.
Spot-check the result
Once the import finishes, open a handful of records and compare them against the source system — one recent deal, one old one, and one contact who appears on multiple files. Catching a column mapped to the wrong field now is far easier than unpicking it after you've been working in the system for a month.
Understand how dedupe works with Velocity
If you also connect Velocity, imported deals dedupe against later syncs by loan number. When a synced deal carries the same loan number as one you imported, BrokerDam treats them as the same file instead of creating a second copy.
The practical consequence: a deal row imported without a loan number can't be matched, and may show up alongside its synced counterpart. If you find duplicates after your first sync, missing loan numbers in the import file are the first place to look.
Import in batches if your book is large
There's no need to move everything on day one. Import your active files first so you can start working, then bring in the historical archive once you're comfortable with how the mapping behaves. A small first import is the cheapest way to test your column mapping.
Keep the export file. Hold on to the original file from your old system until you've verified the import. It costs nothing and makes a re-import trivial if you decide to change how a column is mapped.