Turning a 90-Minute Import into 20 (Vue + Laravel)

The problem

Our team regularly imported data from a third-party tool that only exported messy CSV files — unpredictable column names, inconsistent structures, the occasional typo. Cleaning and importing each file by hand took well over an hour, every time. Across the team, that added up to hundreds of wasted hours.

What I built

I automated the whole flow across a Vue.js front end and a Laravel back end. The back end does the heavy lifting: it parses each file and runs it through several layers of validation, so it can handle odd column names, different formats, and small human errors without breaking. The front end gives the team a simple, guided upload — making it hard to get wrong. I also wrote clear documentation so anyone could prepare a file and import it correctly.

Both Vue and Laravel were new to me when I started, so part of the work was getting up to speed quickly while keeping the code solid.

The result

A task that used to take around 90 minutes dropped to 20–30 minutes, freeing the team for higher-impact work. A few unusual file formats still need a manual touch — a good target for a future update — but the core workflow now runs itself.