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Import products into Cliniko

Transfer stock or product lists into Cliniko.

Emily avatar
Written by Emily
Updated over a week ago

There are some important things to keep in mind when it comes to tax on your product prices. Head here to get the the details.

Cliniko allows you to store products in your account—while you can add them individually, you can also import a list of products in bulk. This is handy if they currently "live" in another practice management system, or on a spreadsheet. Importing products means that you can bring in a lot of products at once, which is certainly more efficient than adding them one by one!

This guide will walk you through how to prepare your spreadsheet for import, and how to ensure that your products get imported into Cliniko and are ready to be sold!


Importing products into Cliniko

First, head to Settings, and then Data imports:

Under Choose an import type, select Products, and then press Import button:

On the next page, click the Choose file button and select your CSV file from wherever it's stored on your computer. Then click the Match information button:

You'll be brought to a page where you will now "match" information from your spreadsheet to Cliniko:

What does "matching information" mean?

Your CSV file will have certain fields—name, price, cost price. These fields can be imported into Cliniko and "matched" to the same areas! Cliniko will do its best to recognise what's already in your spreadsheet and it will try to match fields accordingly (i.e. Name  to Name, into Quantity to Stock level, etc.).

Sometimes, though, it won't quite understand what you have in your spreadsheet, and may not match it correctly, or import it at all. This is why it's important to spend some time on this part of the import process, making sure that fields are being matched appropriately!

If you click the menus under Import into, you'll be presented with a list of all the available fields you can import something into:

Here's what each of those fields means:

  • Item code: the item code for the product (if applicable).

  • Name: the name of the product.

  • Price (inc. tax): the number that you put here is the amount that your patient will pay. The "inc. tax" part simply determines whether that amount will be tax-inclusive or not. 

  • Cost price: this is the amount that you paid for this item. 

  • Product supplier: the vendor/company you purchased this product from.

  • Taxable: if the product's sale price has tax, put the "type" of tax here (i.e. GST). 

  • Stock level: how many of this item do you have on hand?

  • Notes: any general notes you might want to add about this produc.

  • Serial number: the serial number for this product (if applicable).

The way taxes are handled in products might seem a teensy bit confusing. Head here to learn about how they work.

Once you've "matched" the spreadsheet fields with their corresponding Cliniko item fields, it should look something like this:

Hit that Import and finish button! You'll then see that your data is importing; you can leave the page and come back later, or wait! It shouldn't take very long.

Once it's imported, you'll see the details of the import:

Now your products are imported! They will now be visible in the Products page:


Understanding taxes and products

What's the difference between "including" and "excluding" tax on product prices?

When you look at your list of products, you'll see two columns for price: one that "excludes tax", and one that "includes tax":

The one on the far right—"Price (inc. tax)"—is the amount the patient is going to pay, regardless of whether or not the product is taxable. Let's take a closer look at two different "versions" of pricing:

As we can see from the top item, the price excluding tax is $13.64, and the price including tax is $15. The patient is going to be paying $15 for this product; tax is included in the price.

On the second item, the price for both is just $10. There's no tax on this item. If you want to be charging GST (for example) on top of this $10, you'd want to set the "Price (inc. tax)" as $11, make sure to mark the product as "Taxable". That would make it look like this in your product list:

How can I make a product's price tax-inclusive?

If you're doing this on an import, you'd want to put the type of tax under the tax-specific column (i.e. GST under "Taxable"):

If you're doing this manually, you'd want to be sure to tick the "Price includes tax" box, and then select the relevant tax type from the "Tax" menu:

You only need to tick that box if you want this price to be inclusive of tax. If you want Cliniko to calculate an additional amount of tax on top of the price, do not tick that box—just select a tax type from the "Tax" menu.

How does this look on an invoice?

An invoice will display the "unit price" as the pre-tax price (if the product is taxable). The "total price" is the amount that the patient is paying for:

If a product is taxable, you'll see the tax type on the invoice, as well as the total amount of tax.

If you still have questions on taxes and products, feel free to reach out to our support team. 💬 We're always happy to help!


There are other types of things you can import into Cliniko, including patients and contacts. Head over here to learn more!

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