Add new dropdown options

Core fields like 'Type' or 'Gender' in Beacon are drop-down lists — they come with pre-existing options.

The Beacon standard templates will really handily tell you all the core options in that field already.

We can see this directly correlates with the options in the 'Type' field on the Person record:

But your spreadsheets might include new values not yet in that list.

Example:

Your spreadsheet might include Person 'Types' like:

Corporate contact
Trustee

➡️ You’ll need to add these new options to the drop-down list fields in Beacon so the data will import smoothly.

➕ ACTION: For each drop-down column in your spreadsheet, go into Beacon and make sure all new values are added to that field.

Add new fields for extra data

Some columns in your spreadsheet won’t match any field in Beacon yet — especially if you’ve added new columns.

Example:

My example dataset currently looks like this:

✅ Name
✅ Email
✅ Address
✅ Contact consent
❌ NEW: Religion → Not needed, marked to ignore
✅ Gender
✅ Events attended
❌ NEW: Gala dietary requirements → Also marked to ignore
✅ Donation amount
✅ Donation date
✅ NEW: Reason for donation
✅ NEW: Current income
✅ NEW: Sexuality

Your next step is to create new fields in Beacon for all the '✅ NEW' data you want to keep.

Where should each field be stored?

Decide which record type the field belongs to.

Ask yourself:

Is this data about the person? → Goes on the Person record
Is it about something they did or an interaction with them (donation, event, etc)? → Goes on a related record like Payment or Event attendee

Example:

Data	Goes On	Why
Name, Gender	Person	Core details about the person
Reason for donation	Payment	Specific to one donation
Sexuality	Person	Part of identity, doesn’t change often

➕ ACTION: Revisit your spreadsheets and move each new field to the correct sheet based on where it belongs.

Choose the right field type

Now choose what type of field it should be.

For some things, this is really simple

A 'date' should be stored in a 'date' field
An 'address' should be stored in a 'location' field.

In others, it might not be so clear which type of field you should use. For example, when you have a piece of text you need to store, how do you chose whether to store it as a short text, long text or dropdown field?

Examples:

Sexuality
- Record type: Person
- Field type: Dropdown
- Why: Stable info, used for reporting

Reason for donation
- Record type: Payment
- Field type: Long text
- Why: Specific to each donation, better as open text

➕ ACTION: For each new field, decide on:

The field type (Dropdown, Long text, etc)
The record type (Person, Payment, etc)

Add your fields to beacon

Now that you've decided:

✅ Where each new field should go
✅ What type of field it should be

You can add them in Beacon so they’re ready for your import.

➕ ACTION: For every new column in your spreadsheet, create a custom field in Beacon on the correct record type.

Advanced customisation (optional)

NOTE: This step will not be available to Starter customers.

If your data doesn’t fit Beacon’s core structure or record types, you might need:

🧩 Custom fields (most common)
🏗️ Custom record types (advanced)

Only consider custom record types if your data truly doesn't fit anywhere else. Start with Beacon’s standard structure first. Take a look at Beacon's core data structure explained here.

Recap checklist

By now, you should have:

✅ Identified all the data you’re bringing into Beacon
✅ Ignored any fields you no longer need
✅ Added dropdown options for any new values
✅ Created custom fields for anything missing
✅ Assigned each field to the right place
✅ Picked the best field types for your data
✅ Created custom record types if absolutely needed

You're now ready to move on to importing your data 🎉