Moving a Nepal business from Google Sheets and WhatsApp into a CRM for the first time is not a migration — it is a data structure project, and most businesses underestimate how much cleaning the existing data needs before it can go into a CRM

To import contacts from a Google Sheet into HubSpot or GoHighLevel, the sheet must first be structured with one row per contact and consistent column headers that match the field names in the destination platform. HubSpot's import wizard accepts a CSV file and maps each column to a contact property during the upload; GoHighLevel has an equivalent import flow. The most common import failures come from inconsistent column headers, phone numbers in non-standard formats, and duplicate email addresses in the source file. Cleaning and standardising the Google Sheet before export reduces import errors significantly.

Deduplicating a Google Sheets contact list before a CRM import involves identifying rows that represent the same contact and merging or removing the redundant ones. The most reliable matching field is email address, but for Nepal business contact lists where many rows have no email, phone number becomes the primary matching field. Because phone numbers are stored in multiple formats (+977-98XXXXXXXX, 98XXXXXXXX, 977 98XXXXXXXX), the first step is standardising all phone numbers to a single format before running any deduplication logic. Google Sheets does not have a native deduplication tool that handles format variations, so the standardisation step typically requires a script or a manual process.

The minimum useful contact fields for a Nepal-based business CRM are: full name, primary phone number (standardised to +977 format), email address, company name, lead source (the channel where the contact was first acquired), and pipeline stage (where the contact currently sits in the sales process). Additional fields that are useful for Nepal B2B businesses include: district or city, industry, and a notes field for context that does not fit a structured property. The field list should reflect the decisions the sales team actually needs to make, not an imported template from a generic CRM setup guide.

Adding lead source data to contacts that were imported without it requires a combination of team recall, message history review, and pattern matching. For contacts with a known introduction date, matching that date against campaign or event records (trade fair attendance lists, Instagram campaign dates, referral partner introductions) can recover the source for a portion of the database. For contacts where the source cannot be determined, assigning a consistent "source: pre-CRM / unknown" value is the correct approach. This keeps the field populated so that filters and reports work correctly, and distinguishes historical contacts from future contacts where source capture is required at the point of entry.

WhatsApp Business allows contact export as a .vcf file, which contains name and phone number for each contact. The export does not include conversation history, deal context, or any notes. To import these contacts into a CRM, the .vcf file needs to be converted to a CSV format with consistent column headers, phone numbers need to be standardised to the platform's required format, and any context that exists in conversation history needs to be manually added to a notes field before or after the import. For larger WhatsApp contact lists, the most efficient approach is to export, convert, standardise, and then bulk-import the file rather than adding contacts one at a time through the CRM interface.