Migrating from Follow Up Boss to RealFoyer: What Exports, What Imports, What Stays Behind

Introduction

This is the Follow Up Boss version of the general CRM migration guide. That article covers the method: audit, export, clean, map, test, validate, import, run in parallel. This one fills in the two specifics the method depends on — what a Follow Up Boss export actually contains, and what RealFoyer's lead import will accept from it — so you can see before you start which parts of your history make the trip.

The short version is that contact details and a handful of lead fields move, and the conversation history does not. Everything below explains which fields are which, and how to keep what does not move.

⚡ Quick answer — can I move my Follow Up Boss database into RealFoyer? Your contacts, yes; their history, no. Follow Up Boss exports people to a CSV file, including up to 50 recent notes, calls and texts per contact when you choose "All Columns". RealFoyer imports leads from a CSV file, but the import stores contact and lead fields only — name, email, phone, city, address, type, status, source and a created date. Notes, call and text logs, tags, the assigned agent and custom fields do not arrive. Keep the full export as your archive, import the contact layer, and plan the rest deliberately.

What Follow Up Boss lets you export

Follow Up Boss documents its export in Export Contacts to a Spreadsheet. The export runs from People > All People: filter, select, click the export icon, and the file downloads as a CSV.

Tick "All Columns", or you get less than you think. Follow Up Boss says plainly what happens if you do not: "If this box is not checked, only the exposed columns on the people page will be exported." Without it you also get only the first phone number, email and address for each person. With it, Follow Up Boss exports up to six of each.

Not everyone on the account can export. "Exporting contacts is available to account owners by default." An owner can grant the permission to other users under Admin > Teams, and the owner receives an email whenever someone else runs an export. If you are an agent leaving a team account, sort out the permission before anything else.

What the full export includes. With "All Columns" ticked, the documented columns include the date the person was added, name, stage, lead source, assigned agent, price, tags, timeframe, phones, emails and addresses, property fields, deal stage, close date and price, campaign source fields, background, and custom fields. Relationships come too — up to four per contact, with spouses always included.

Conversation history comes partly, as text. "Each contact's most recent 50 calls, 50 texts, and 50 notes are included when exporting all columns." That is the most recent 50 of each, not all of them. For a long-running contact, older history stays in Follow Up Boss.

Some things do not export at all. On emails, Follow Up Boss is direct: "No. Emails are only stored in Follow Up Boss, so they can’t be exported." It points out that mail sent through Follow Up Boss is still in the agent's connected email account. Call recordings are the same: "No. Call recordings can’t be exported."

Pond leads lose their pond. Leads in a pond export with a pond assignment, but "The Pond name will not be exported." Follow Up Boss suggests adding the pond name as a tag before exporting if you need it.

Follow Up Boss's own guide to moving between two Follow Up Boss accounts is a useful reference for the limits of the file itself. Even into another Follow Up Boss account, it lists email templates, text templates, action plans, tasks, appointments, emails and lead activity as not transferred by import. If those do not survive a move inside the same product, plan on rebuilding them in any other.

What RealFoyer accepts on import

RealFoyer imports leads from a CSV file, and that is the whole migration path in: there is no direct connection to Follow Up Boss in either direction, and no automatic mapping from its export. The help centre says the same — plan a migration as an export from your current system followed by an import.

What follows was checked against RealFoyer's production CRM code on 21 October 2026.

One CSV file at a time, matched to RealFoyer's fields. You upload the file in the CRM, match its columns to RealFoyer's fields, review, and import. A column is matched for you only when its heading is exactly a RealFoyer field name, such as "First Name" or "Email". Follow Up Boss calls several of its columns something else — "Email 1", "Phone 1", "Stage", "Lead Source", "Date Added" — so expect to match those yourself.

The fields the import stores. First name, last name, email, phone, city, address, type, status, source and a created date. That is the complete list. A column you do not match is ignored, and so is anything outside that list.

Three fields are required on every row. Email, first name and phone. A row missing any of them is skipped rather than imported. A Follow Up Boss contact with an email address but no phone number will not import — and in most databases that is a large group. Decide what to do with them before the import, not after.

An email that already exists is skipped, not merged. If a lead with the same email is already in your RealFoyer CRM, the row is left alone. Re-importing a corrected file does not update records that made it in the first time. Deduplicate in the spreadsheet, where it is cheap.

Status and type take RealFoyer's values only. Status must be one of RealFoyer's stages — new, contacted, qualified, converted or lost — written in lowercase. Type must be buyer, seller, rental or commercial. A row carrying any other value fails. Follow Up Boss stages will not match those words as exported, so translate them in the spreadsheet first. A blank status imports as new, and a blank source imports as imported.

Phone numbers take the +1 country code. The import assigns +1, which is right for the United States and Canada and wrong for any international contact in your database.

Imported leads belong to the account that imports them. The assigned agent in Follow Up Boss does not carry over. On a team, plan to reassign after the import with RealFoyer's routing and assignment, and decide first what happens to leads owned by someone who has left.

You can put the whole file into a group. Name a new group or pick an existing one at import time, so a batch can be found and worked on as a unit afterwards.

You get a record of what happened. Each import appears in an import history with a count of rows imported and rows not imported, and a downloadable copy of your file with a status and a message added to every row. That file is your validation list: every skipped or failed row, with the reason.

The other way leads enter RealFoyer is an inbound webhook: RealFoyer issues a URL and a token, so a system you already run can post new leads in. That is for new leads arriving, not for history. RealFoyer is not connected to Follow Up Boss, so nothing flows between the two automatically.

What does not carry over

Put the two lists side by side and the gap is specific.

The last row needs care. RealFoyer campaigns honour unsubscribes and suppressions recorded in RealFoyer, but the lead import cannot bring across who unsubscribed in Follow Up Boss. Before the first campaign, identify contacts who opted out in Follow Up Boss and keep them out of every audience — importing them as their own named group makes them easy to find. Email marketing for agents explains why that distinction matters.

None of the "No" rows has to be lost. They stay in your archived export, readable in any spreadsheet. The decision is which of them someone will need, and where they will look for it.

Preparing the Follow Up Boss file

Work on a copy. Keep the untouched export as the archive and never edit it.

1. Keep the columns that import. First Name, Last Name, Email 1, Phone 1, Address 1 - Street, Address 1 - City, Stage, Lead Source and Date Added. Remove the rest from the import copy — they are in the archive.
2. Translate stages. Add a column that maps each Follow Up Boss stage to new, contacted, qualified, converted or lost. Write the mapping down; it is the decision you will be asked about later.
3. Set type where you know it. buyer, seller, rental or commercial, or leave it blank.
4. Handle the rows without a phone or first name. Fill them where you can, or set them aside as a separate list with a reason.
5. Deduplicate on email. Merge first, because the import keeps the first record it sees and skips the rest.
6. Separate the opt-outs. Contacts who unsubscribed go into their own file and their own group.
7. Check the date column. Make sure Date Added holds a full date in one consistent format.

Cutover checklist

Before you give notice

• Confirm you have export permission on the Follow Up Boss account, or ask the owner for it.
• Add pond names as tags if you need them, then export People with "All Columns" ticked.
• Export the Follow Up Boss reports you rely on separately; they are a different export.
• Store the untouched export somewhere permanent.
• List your action plans, templates, open tasks and upcoming appointments — none of them moves in the file.

Preparing

• Build the import copy as described above.
• Decide what happens to contacts with no phone, contacts owned by former agents, and contacts who opted out.

Test import

• Import 50 to 100 hard rows: an old contact, a merged duplicate, one with unusual characters in the name, a few opt-outs, and one you know well.
• Open the result file and read every skipped or failed row.
• Open the contact you know well. Check name, phone, status, source — and whether the original date shows where you expect it.

Full import

• Import the rest with Follow Up Boss still readable.
• Reconcile counts: rows in the file against imported plus skipped, with every difference explained.
• Reassign leads to the right agents.
• Confirm the opt-out group is excluded before any campaign is scheduled.

Switching over

• List every lead source that delivers to Follow Up Boss and decide how each will reach RealFoyer — your RealFoyer website, the inbound webhook if the source can post to a URL, or entry by hand — then confirm a test lead arrives from each.
• Rebuild the action plans you still use as RealFoyer follow-up sequences.
• Re-enter open tasks and upcoming appointments by hand.
• Name the day new leads go only to RealFoyer, and say it to the team.
• Keep Follow Up Boss readable for at least a month before you cancel it.

FAQ

Is there a direct Follow Up Boss integration in RealFoyer? No. RealFoyer is not connected to Follow Up Boss, in either direction. Moving from one to the other is an export from Follow Up Boss and a CSV import into RealFoyer.

Will my notes come across? Not through the import. The Follow Up Boss export holds up to the 50 most recent notes, calls and texts per contact when you choose "All Columns", and RealFoyer's import has no field for them. Keep them in the archived export, and for the few relationships where history matters most, add the key points to the lead in RealFoyer by hand.

Why were some of my contacts skipped? Usually one of three reasons: no phone number, an email that already exists in your RealFoyer CRM, or a status or type value that is not one of RealFoyer's. The result file names the reason on every row.

Can I import a second time to fix mistakes? You can import new rows, but a lead whose email is already in RealFoyer is skipped, not updated. Fix those leads directly in the CRM, which is why the test import on a small sample matters.

Can I keep my Follow Up Boss tags? Not as tags. If one tag defines a group you work with, import those contacts as their own file into a named group.

What happens to my Follow Up Boss emails? Follow Up Boss does not export them. Mail sent through it remains in the agent's connected email account.

In short

A Follow Up Boss export carries far more than RealFoyer's import stores. Contact details, status, source and a created date move; notes, logs, tags, owners and custom fields stay in the archive.

Tick "All Columns", keep the untouched file forever, translate stages before the import, and settle the contacts with no phone and the ones who opted out before you start. Then test on your hardest rows and read the result file line by line.

Moving from Follow Up Boss? Book a demo and bring your export — we will show you what imports and what stays behind.

Related reading

• How to Migrate to a New Real Estate CRM Without Losing Lead History
• Migrating from kvCORE to RealFoyer
• Real Estate Lead Routing
• Real Estate Email Marketing

Research Integrity

Published 21 October 2026 as a child of the CRM migration guide. Follow Up Boss facts come only from Follow Up Boss's own help centre, read on 21 October 2026, and each quotation was matched word for word against the retrieved text. RealFoyer's import behaviour was checked the same day against the production CRM code — the CSV import route, its background import job and the lead model — rather than against marketing copy: the stored fields, the three required fields, the duplicate-email rule, the allowed status and type values, the +1 default, the importer's ownership of imported leads and the per-row result file are all read from that code. Nothing here claims a Follow Up Boss connection, because none exists. No statistics are cited.

Source log (all retrieved 21 October 2026):

• Follow Up Boss, Export Contacts to a Spreadsheet: "If this box is not checked, only the exposed columns on the people page will be exported." · "Exporting contacts is available to account owners by default." · "Each contact's most recent 50 calls, 50 texts, and 50 notes are included when exporting all columns." · "No. Emails are only stored in Follow Up Boss, so they can’t be exported." · "No. Call recordings can’t be exported." · "The Pond name will not be exported."
• Follow Up Boss, How to Migrate from One Account to Another: its "Information not transferred via import" list — email templates, text templates, action plans, tasks, appointments, emails, lead activity.
• RealFoyer help centre, Can I import my existing leads into RealFoyer?