CBSubs Import Issues -- Dates not respected, new dates created

CB 1.9.1 / CB Subs 3 / Joomla 3.3.4

Using the CBSUBS Import Tool to import subscriptions for my users.

When I import them with the dates that they last subscribed (what I want) the data gets written over with today's date. This is a huge issue with my paid plans as I am importing folks who would need to renew before 12/31/14 BUT the system is satrting their subscription at 10/1/14 and according to the plan will auto-subscribe them thru 12/31/15. If they subscribe after 9/15/14 they get the rest of calendar year + the following calendar year. For reference, here is a sample of my import file 9which has over 600 records):

3071,3,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,
3075,3,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,
3077,1,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,
3083,3,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,
3084,1,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,
3092,1,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,
3095,1,A,2009-05-05 00:00:00,

All of my dates have been changed to 10/1/14 and the time of import. Why bother having the dates in the file?

Also having/had the following issues with this tool:

It is a real TRIAL to get the data listed such that this import tool will work -- directions are very misleading, the comments on the screen do not help. One would have assumed that you use the field name that you are importing to, but not so. The field names displayed in the comments are not even what you use. Some problems:

• It's not stated that you should not have the header row with the data -- you can't have the header row in there (no field names needed AT ALL).
• Not stated to have the trailing comma at end of each row.
• Apparently the date input is useless -- it is putting in today's date.
• The date format is European and Excel does not easily translate slashes/dates to this format; when it does it wipes out the time
• The file import times out after just a few records -- You have to break up the file to do multiple imports and delete those records it DID import. Maybe timeout can be blamed on my server, but it seems that CBSubs is "sorting" the plan ids first and that is taking a lot of time. When the system timed out only 1 plan had partially imported -- it had sorted records and started going down the ids.

I am really disappointed in this experience for all the work it entails. I stayed with CBSubs when moving from j1.5 to j3.3 thinking it would be less work than a new system, but not so. There are no good tools for helping you upgrade, yet you must upgrade as the CMS evolves. If I am using an upgraded version of the same software I should be able to import those subscriptions with push of a button or at least more ease. I understand parts of Joomla have changed but this is just applying subscriptions -- importing data into a few fields -- the users are already in place.

The date displayed is adjusted based off the timezone setting. It however is stored and its calculations are done based off the UTC datetime you've input. Check within _cbsubs_subscriptions to see the raw datetime. You should also be able to see the raw datetime within CBSubs > Subscriptions by clicking the # under the ID column.

I agree the import feature has room for improvement. We've plans to add import/export API to CB so it can properly handle import/export of XML and CSV formats. Once the API is there we can implement a better more clear usage for CBSubs.

Please note CBSubs import does not import CB fields. It is only for importing subscriptions.

Doing multiple imports also is not a limitation of the import feature, but of your server. This is due to having a lot of PHP/SQL processing happening all at once. Ideally we'd like to have a batching capability for our import API so it basically brakes it up into chunks for you automatically so you won't have to, but it'll still be done in batches as to not kill your server.