Manual Uploads

Some of what you spend and earn never appears in an advertising account. Walk-ins, cash sales, WhatsApp orders, invoiced work, agency retainers, print runs. Without them your return-on-spend is worked out from only part of your income.

Manual Uploads is a Google Sheet we create for you, share with everyone on your account, and read once a day. What you type in it reaches your dashboard the same way a connected platform's data does.

If you don't have a Google account - or your IT won't allow one - you can upload CSV files instead. Same three sections, same figures, same rules. It's one or the other, not both.

Connect the real thing where you can

A connected account is more accurate, needs no typing, and can't be forgotten on a busy week. Use this for the things nothing can connect to - not as a substitute for a connection you could set up.

Where a figure already comes from a connection, anything you type for the same period is left out on purpose, so nothing is ever counted twice. The sheet tells you when that happens, row by row.

Setting it up

Go to Setup and open Manual Uploads - it's the last item in the list, below every real connector. The badge shows 0/1 until a sheet exists and 1/1 once one does.

Everyone on the account gets Editor access automatically. There's no link to share and nothing to send - it appears in their Google Drive under Shared with me.

If a Google Sheet isn't an option for you, choose Upload CSV files instead on the same screen. That's covered further down.

What goes in it

The sheet has three tabs you fill in, plus a Read me tab that explains itself and reports back after every read.

Every tab is laid out the same way: row 1 explains what the tab is for, row 2 is the column headings, and row 3 is a worked example. All three stay on screen as you scroll.

The example is there to be read, not filled in - it's locked, so you can't type over it by mistake and lose what you entered. Start on row 4.

Don't rename the headings or move them. Everything else about the sheet - colours, column widths, extra formatting - is yours to change.

Rules worth knowing before you start

• Don't rename the tabs or the column headings. That's the one thing that stops your numbers being read at all. If a heading is missing we refuse the whole tab rather than guess, and say so on the Read me tab.
• Dates are checked as you type. Type 2026-08-01, or use the date picker. If a cell won't accept what you type, the format is wrong - we'd rather it be refused at your keyboard than read as the wrong month.
• Amounts must be numbers. 4,200 is fine. about 4000 isn't, and won't be guessed at.
• Use your account currency. A row in another currency is not counted, because converting it needs an exchange rate we don't have. Convert it yourself and enter that figure. A lead with no value yet isn't affected - the check only applies to rows carrying an amount.
• Grey columns are ours. The Status column is filled in automatically. You can't edit it and don't need to.

How you know it worked

If you upload CSV files, you're told straight away: which sections were updated, which were left alone, which files couldn't be read and why, and every row that wasn't counted with its line number and the reason. It's all on the Manual Uploads screen and stays there until your next upload.

If you have a sheet, we read it once a day. Nothing to send, nothing to click.

After each read, the Status column on every row tells you what happened to it:

• "Read 25 August 2026" - counted, nothing to do.
• "Not counted - ..." - something needs fixing, and the rest of the message says what. "Not counted - Amount must be a number. Remove any currency symbol, spaces or letters."
• "Already covered by ..." - the row is correct exactly as typed, and was left out because a connection already covers it. Nothing to do.

"Not counted" only ever means you have something to fix. A row that's correct but left out says so in plain words instead.

The Read me tab carries a one-line summary of the whole read - when we last looked, how many rows were counted, how many weren't, and whether anything was left out because a connection covered it.

You can also see it on the Manual Uploads section in Setup: last read date, rows counted, and how many need fixing.

Uploading CSV files instead

For anyone on Outlook, without a Google account, or whose IT blocks sharing files with an outside address. Everything below the upload is identical - same three sections, same checks, same rules about connections winning.

A sheet is still better where you can have one, for one reason: we read a sheet every day on our own, and a CSV only changes your figures when you upload it. Nothing updates in between.

How it works

1. On Setup -> Manual Uploads, download the section you want to fill in. There's one file per section: Spend.csv, Deals and leads.csv, Offline revenue.csv.
2. Fill it in. Each file carries one worked example row showing what to type.
3. Upload it back. You can send one file or all three at once.

You never say which section a file is. We read that from its column headings, so a file can't be filed under the wrong section by mistake. That's also why the top row matters more here than anywhere else: rename or delete a heading and we can't tell what the file is, so we'll refuse it and say which heading is missing.

The example row is never counted, whether you delete it or leave it in place. Type over it or start on the row below - either is fine.

Uploading one section never changes the others

This is the part worth reading twice.

Anything you don't upload is left exactly as it was. Upload a corrected Spend file and your deals and offline revenue are untouched - not re-read, not re-checked, not removed. After every upload we tell you which sections changed and which were left alone, so you never have to go and check.

The consequence: leaving a file out doesn't delete anything. If you actually want to clear a section - say you've decided your deals now come from a connected CRM and the old typed ones should go - upload that section's file with the headings and no rows underneath. An empty file means "nothing here"; a missing file means "don't touch it".

Files from Excel

Excel writes CSV files differently depending on your computer's regional settings - on many machines it separates columns with semicolons rather than commas. You don't need to do anything about this. We work out which one your file uses. Tab-separated files are read too.

If your file opens correctly in your own spreadsheet program, it will read correctly here.

What you can't do from a CSV

• You can't have both a sheet and CSV uploads. If a Google Sheet is already set up for your account, uploads are refused - add your rows to the sheet instead.
• Nothing is read on a schedule. Your figures change when you upload and not before.
• There's no Status column to read. With a sheet, the reason a row wasn't counted is written next to that row. There's nowhere to write that on a file sitting on your computer, so we list every rejected row - section, line number and reason - on the Manual Uploads screen after each upload, and it stays there until the next one.

When a connection covers the same thing

A connected account always wins. You can never double-count by typing something in that's also being fetched.

• Spend is resolved day by day, per channel. If Google Ads is connected and reporting for the first half of a month, and you've entered a cost covering the whole month, the half it already covers is dropped and the rest still counts - the row tells you exactly how much: "14 of the 31 days counted - Google Ads already covers the rest, so nothing is counted twice."
• Deals and leads is all or nothing. If you connect a CRM and it's returning data, the whole tab stops counting - we can't tell whether a deal you typed is the same deal your CRM already has, so we don't guess. Your rows stay in the sheet and each one says why it was left out.
• Offline revenue always counts. Nothing else reports it.

A CRM that's connected but hasn't returned any data yet doesn't take over - your typed deals keep counting until real data arrives.

Where it shows up

• Your dashboard figures. Spend, revenue and return-on-spend include what you've entered, and any figure that does is marked "Manual uploads" or "Incl. manual uploads" so you can always tell.
• The CRM section, if you have no CRM connected - your deals, pipeline and top deals render there from the sheet, clearly labelled as your own.
• Reports, and anything you ask. Your figures are included and described as self-reported rather than as something a connection measured. What the sheet adds that nothing else can see - revenue arriving off-channel, spend with no ad account behind it - is remembered, so it shapes answers rather than having to be re-explained each time.

Some things you'd see with a connected CRM aren't shown from a sheet, because a spreadsheet can't answer them honestly. There's no UTM tracking score - a row you typed never had a link to tag - and no deal velocity, because the tab records one date rather than an opened-and-closed pair.

Reminders, and turning them off

If rows weren't counted on the last read, or the sheet hasn't changed in a long while, you'll see it on Today.

These only ever appear once you've actually used the sheet. Setting one up and leaving it empty won't nag you.

If you've stopped using it, open Setup -> Manual Uploads and choose Stop reminding me. The reminders stop for good. Your sheet stays where it is and what's already in it keeps counting - switching the reminders off doesn't take anything off your dashboard.

If something looks wrong

For anything else, see Error messages explained.