Moving your real estate leads from Excel or Google Sheets to a CRM

By the CityNest team · Updated 12 October 2026 · 5 min read

Why the move is worth it

Your spreadsheet holds months of enquiries, and that is exactly why it is hard to leave. But a sheet cannot remind anyone to call, cannot tell you a new lead has arrived, and becomes a different version on every laptop. Moving takes an afternoon. Staying costs a few deals every month.

Step 1: Clean the sheet

• One row per buyer. Merge duplicates; keep the most recent notes.
• One phone number column, 10 digits, no spaces or +91 mixed in.
• Budgets in one unit, for example everything in lakh.
• A status column with a few fixed values such as new, interested, visit done, closed, not interested.

Step 2: Keep only the columns that matter

Name, phone, budget, location or sector, property type, source and last note. Columns nobody has filled in for months can stay behind in the old file.

Step 3: Import

Upload the file or connect the Google Sheet, match each column to the right field, and check a few rows after the import before deleting anything.

Step 4: Make day one count

An import only becomes a system when every active lead has an owner and a next action with a date. Spend the first morning going through active leads with the team and setting those. From then on, reminders do the remembering.

Step 5: Stop the sheet

Agree a date after which nobody adds leads to the old sheet. New leads from ads, portals and walk-ins go straight into the CRM. Two systems in parallel is how leads get lost again.

How CityNest handles it

CityNest imports leads from a spreadsheet or a Google Sheet. You can also add leads by hand, from your phone contacts, or from a photo of a visiting card, and every lead records its source. When you sign up, our team helps you import the leads you already have, connect your lead sources and show your team how to use it. Your team then joins with an invite code.