CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Sounds like you're heading in the right direction. I see you're importing an External Identifier with each record - which is helpful since you'll be able to use the "key" when you do the Membership Import step (creating a membership record for each contact).

As you've noted, both individuals and organizations can have memberships in CiviMember (I think most folks create different membership types for these cases). If employees of a member organization are automatically members - then you should set the "Relationship Type" field  for that membership type as "Employer of".

What I would like to do now is (1) create relationships between the individuals and the organisations that they work for or represent then (2) add the membership data component to all records from the previous records.

(1) The only way to create relationships during an import is to import Individuals and have columns with "their organization info" (Org name, potentially address, etc.) in each row. Then you can map the "related org" fields by selected from " - related contact - " choices. If you've already imported the organizations - the code should match to the existing organization record and create the relationship as long as the organization names are unique and entered in exactly the same way. As always, experiment with a few records first.

(2) For membership data, first create your membership types. Then, if you want to use import - you'll need to add the exact name of the appropriate type to each contact row along with a Join Date (when they first became a member) and Start Date (beginning of their current membership period). Then use the External Identifer as "match to contact" in the mapping page.