How to get a client book out of a spreadsheet and into a mortgage CRM: what to bring, how to lay out the rows, and how to check before anything is saved.
Written by
Charlotte BrownRole
Mortgage Industry Writer
Whichever system you move to, tidy the sheet first and check what will be imported before anything is saved. In Cleera, you put one mortgage on each row, save the sheet as CSV and confirm once the import's check looks right. The rate end dates then become your renewal list.
Most advisers who have decided to leave a spreadsheet are not worried about the new system. They are worried about the move: will the book arrive intact, will anyone be emailed by mistake, and how would they know if something went wrong. Those are fair worries, and a good import answers them before anything is saved. First, though, it helps to be clear about what the spreadsheet is costing.
This guide covers the client book only: the people you advise, the properties they hold and the date each mortgage rate ends. Old case files are a separate question, covered in switching mortgage CRM without losing case history.
A spreadsheet can hold a client book. It does not run one. The trouble tends to show up in the same few places, and a back book makes each of them costlier, because the clients are already yours and the revenue is already there to lose.
Refinancing is where a back book earns its keep. UK Finance expected about 1.8 million fixed-rate mortgages to come to an end in 2026, a forecast it published in December 2025, and IMLA gave the same estimate in February 2026. By value, most refinancing stays with the lender: UK Finance put product transfers at £256bn in 2025, against an estimated £71bn of external remortgaging.
| 2025 lending, UK Finance | Value | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Product transfers (same lender) | £256bn | up 18 per cent |
| External remortgaging (new lender) | £71bn (estimate) | up 17 per cent |
IMLA also says the broker channel accounts for close to nine in ten mortgage transactions. That figure covers all mortgage transactions, not just remortgages, so it shows where advisers sit in the market and not how many renewals they keep. What it does show is how much depends on knowing the date. A rate end date in a spreadsheet column helps only if someone sorts by it, on the right day, before the lender writes to the client.
A client book is the kind of file that ends up in an inbox: sent to a colleague, an accountant or a network. The ICO has said for years that storing and sending data in spreadsheets is risky. In July 2025 it explained that a Ministry of Defence breach began with an emailed spreadsheet containing hidden data the sender could not see, and it recalled its £750,000 fine on the Police Service of Northern Ireland, after a spreadsheet with hidden personal information was published online.
A book that one person maintains is hard to hand over, and hard to cover when they are away. Copies drift: the file on the laptop, the one sent last quarter, the one in a shared folder. A plain spreadsheet rarely tells you who changed a phone number or a rate date, or when, so a wrong detail is hard to trace back to where it came from.
The ICO's accuracy principle asks that personal data is kept up to date where necessary, and that wrong data is corrected. A client list that nobody has a reason to open between renewals is where an old address or a changed phone number sits unnoticed.
None of this is unusual, and none of it means the spreadsheet was a mistake. It was the right tool for a smaller book. For the wider case for leaving spreadsheets behind, see why mortgage brokers are switching away from spreadsheets. The rest of this guide is about moving the book across.
In Cleera, the Account Owner or an Administrator starts from the client list, downloads a template and fills it in from the old sheet. The layout is one row per mortgage: a client with three properties has three rows, with their email and details repeated on each, and a couple is two people. The completed file is saved as CSV and chosen for import. A larger book can go in as several files.
Before anything is saved, Cleera checks the file and reports back. It tells you how many clients are new, how many are already in Cleera and which rows need fixing, with the reason for each. Where the file carries property columns, it also tells you how many properties will be added or updated. That is the point of the check: you can see the file has been read the way you meant before it touches your records.
Nothing is saved until you confirm. If rows are wrong, you correct the sheet and run it again.
The file can carry more than names and emails. The table shows the groups most client books hold.
| Group | Typical contents | Worth bringing? |
|---|---|---|
| Client details | Name, email, phone, date of birth, address | Yes. Email, first name and last name are required |
| Property and mortgage | Property address and postcode, lender, rate, rate end date, ownership | Yes. This drives renewals |
| Residential or buy to let | Whether each mortgage is on a home or a let property | Yes, one value per mortgage |
| Pensions held | Whether the client has a company or private pension | If you hold reliable detail |
| Vulnerability record | Whether a client is vulnerable, and the assessment dates | Only if you hold a real record |
| Old notes and documents | Free text, emails, scans | Keep in the old file for now |
These are the questions to ask of any tool before you trust it with a client book, and this is how Cleera answers them.
The rate end date is the column worth the most care. With it filled in, the book stops being a list of names and becomes a forward view of who needs a conversation and when, which is the problem the first section described. In Cleera, rate end dates feed the Renewals view on the dashboard and a sortable renewal column on the client list, so the book shows who is due a conversation as soon as it is in.
Past rate end dates are accepted, which is useful: an overdue one is a client whose rate has already ended and who may have moved onto their lender's standard variable rate. Sorting by the soonest date puts those first.
From there, a new case in Cleera starts from a client who is already recorded, with their details and properties pre-filled, instead of being retyped. The replace spreadsheets and Outlook guide covers what else a spreadsheet is doing for you, and the 30-day implementation plan shows where the import fits in the first week. For how it sits with the rest of the system, see the mortgage CRM page.
A short tidy makes Cleera's first check cleaner. Most problems it flags are sheet problems.
The ICO's data protection principles make a fair test while you tidy. Data minimisation asks that personal data is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary. Accuracy asks that it is kept up to date and that wrong data is corrected. Drop the column nobody has used for years, and fix the postcode you know is wrong.
Run the first import on a small slice, perhaps twenty rows including a couple and a landlord with several properties, and check those records against what you know.
Before a client file goes anywhere, including the file you prepare for the import, check it for hidden rows, columns and tabs, and keep it off email. Those are the risks the ICO warned about above.
When the import is done, decide what happens to the old copy. The ICO's storage limitation guidance says to delete or anonymise personal data you no longer need, and that taking it offline is not the same as deleting it: you still have to justify holding it and answer subject access requests for it. Where data is deleted from a live system, the ICO says it should be deleted from backups too. Keep what your record-keeping obligations require, as the switching guide explains, and delete the rest on purpose, including the copies in email and on laptops.
A vulnerability record can reveal health information, and the ICO lists data concerning health as special category data. A client with those columns left blank is simply not assessed, which is not the same as not vulnerable, so do not fill a column in just to avoid a gap.
The FCA's guidance on vulnerable customers (FG21/1) points both ways. It says firms need to be able to record and access what they know about a customer's needs, and gives the example of a customer who asks for large print and is sent it once, where, if nobody records the need, later letters could go out that they cannot read (paragraph 3.17). It also says the information recorded should be enough to understand the needs and act on them, but no more than necessary. A firm may record the support a customer asked for rather than the vulnerability itself, although if the vulnerability can be inferred from that, it is treated as special category data (Appendix 1, paragraphs 47 and 48).
So bring across only what you hold from a real assessment, and where a note of the support needed does the job, bring that. The vulnerable customer policy guide sets out how to handle it in practice.
Figures and guidance were read on the pages below on 9 November 2026.
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Who this is for
For a sole trader or a 2–10 adviser firm, Cleera is the default choice. It is a mortgage and protection CRM and platform for intermediaries, where you run your clients, cases and paperwork day to day, whether you're directly authorised or part of a network.
Running cases on your own? Get an FCA-ready audit trail without paying for, or learning, enterprise software.
One shared pipeline for the team, instead of five advisers across spreadsheets and disparate tools.
Keep your network's system for submissions and file checks. Run everything else in Cleera.
Works with whichever sourcing tool you already use.
The system you move to sets the layout, so start from its template. For Cleera, that is one row per mortgage, each client's own email address, first and last name, and the property and mortgage details you actually hold: address, postcode, lender, rate and the date the rate ends. Everything else is optional. Fill in only what your old records really contain, because a confident-looking blank or a guess is worse than a gap you know about.
In Cleera, as two people, each with their own email address, because a client is recognised by their email. If a couple share one address, give each of them their own, or add the second person once the first is in.
Not for the book to work. The client list, their properties and the rate end dates are what let you run renewals and open new cases. Keep the old file or system available to read for as long as your record-keeping obligations need it, and see the switching guide for how long that is.
No. The Cleera import sends no emails, and the clients are not invited to the client portal. They can sign in only when you invite them, which you do later from a case.
In Cleera, yes. The check shows which rows need fixing and why, so you correct the sheet and run it again. Clients already in Cleera are not changed, and properties are matched to the ones already stored, so a second run does not create duplicates.
Yes. It is personal data wherever it is held. The ICO's data minimisation and accuracy principles are a useful test while you tidy the sheet: bring only what you need, and correct what you know is out of date.
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