Locations

Locations are the data backbone of every Finder. A Location is a single point on the map with an address, coordinates, and any metadata you’ve configured (image, contact info, custom fields, tags). This page covers the Locations panel — creating, editing, importing, organizing, and the edge cases worth knowing.

For the onboarding-flow version of “how do I add my first locations,” see Add locations. For grouping concepts (Maps, Sets, Tags, Custom Fields), see Concepts.

Where to find it

In the dashboard sidebar, click Locations. You arrive at the Locations panel — a table of every Location in your active Workspace.

🟡 [SCREENSHOT: Locations panel populated with several locations, showing the search bar at the top, action buttons (Add location, Import, Bulk edit), and a single row expanded to reveal address, contact info, custom field values, and tags.]

What a Location contains

Every Location has these fields. Required fields are marked.

Identity

Title (required) — the display name visitors see
ID — assigned by the system; useful for API/CSV correlation

Address & coordinates

Street address line 1 (required)
Street address lines 2 and 3 (optional, for suite numbers, building names)
City, State, Postal code, Country (required for geocoding)
Latitude, Longitude — auto-populated from the address via your Workspace’s autocomplete provider; can be overridden manually if the geocoder picks the wrong point

Contact

Phone (optional)
Website (optional)

Visual

Image (optional) — uploaded directly; rendered on the visitor-facing detail card

Structured data

Custom field values — one entry per Custom Field defined for the Workspace. Required vs. optional depends on the field definition.
Tags — free-form labels; pick existing or create new

Adding a Location manually

Click Add location
Fill in the form (title + address required at minimum)
As you type the street address, an autocomplete dropdown suggests addresses; selecting one fills in the city/state/postal/country fields plus coordinates
Add optional fields (image, phone, website, custom fields, tags) as needed
Click Save

🟡 [SCREENSHOT: Add Location form with all required fields populated, autocomplete suggestions visible on the address line, an image preview thumbnail, and the “Save” action.]

The Location appears in the panel immediately. Geocoding runs synchronously during save.

💡 Tip: For more than ~10 Locations, use bulk import instead of one-at-a-time entry.

Editing a Location

Click any row in the panel to open the editor. Same form as add-new, populated with current values. Save commits your changes.

If you change the address, the geocoder re-runs and updates the coordinates — unless you previously set a manual lat/lng override, in which case the override sticks.

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Confirm whether manual lat/lng overrides are exposed in the Location editor UI today, or only via CSV/API. Affects how to document the “fix a wrong geocode” workflow.]

Bulk CSV import

For 10s to 1000s of Locations.

Prepare your CSV

The minimum your CSV needs:

A column for the title
A column for the street address
Columns for city, state, postal code, country

Optional columns: phone, website, image URL, plus one column per Custom Field you’ve defined.

Run the import

Click Import → CSV
Upload the file
Map columns — DropAFinder shows your CSV columns on the left and DropAFinder fields on the right; select the matching field for each
Validate — rows with missing required fields show as errors; you can fix the CSV and re-upload, or skip those rows on commit
Commit — Locations are created in bulk; addresses geocode synchronously

🟡 [SCREENSHOT: Bulk CSV import wizard at the column-mapping step, with three CSV columns (Name, Address, Phone) mapped to DropAFinder fields and one CSV column (internal_code) marked as unmapped/ignored.]

CSV import is synchronous — the whole batch processes in the request. For large CSVs, this can take a minute or two; the page stays loaded until it completes.

For messy or unstructured data, use AI Location Import instead.

CSV gotchas

Encoding — UTF-8 only. Excel often saves as Windows-1252; save as “CSV UTF-8” or open in a text editor to confirm.
Headers — the first row must be column headers; data starts row 2.
Quoting — wrap any value containing a comma in double quotes.
Custom Field columns — the column header must match an existing Custom Field name; unrecognized columns are silently ignored.

Uploading and replacing images

In the Location editor, click the image area to upload. Supported formats: JPG, PNG, WebP. The image is uploaded to DropAFinder’s CDN and a public URL is stored on the Location.

To replace, upload a new image — the old one is overwritten. To remove, click the delete-icon on the image preview.

Image URLs are public (anyone with the URL can view the image), but they are intentionally hard to guess. Treat the URL itself as the access control.

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Confirm image size limits, recommended dimensions, and whether DropAFinder resizes / generates thumbnails server-side. Affects guidance for content teams.]

Custom fields

If you’ve defined Custom Fields at the Workspace level (see Tags and custom fields), every Location form includes inputs for them. The input type matches the field’s declared type (text, number, etc.).

Custom Field values are stored on the Location and surface in:

The visitor-facing detail card (when configured to show)
Refinements (when a refinement is built on that field — see Refinements)
CSV exports

To add a Custom Field that didn’t exist when you created your Locations, define the field, then either edit each Location or bulk-import a new CSV with a column for that field.

Bulk editing and deletion

Select multiple rows in the Locations panel via checkboxes. Bulk actions appear in the panel header:

Add tag — apply a tag to every selected Location
Remove tag — remove a tag from every selected Location
Set custom field — set a Custom Field value for every selected Location
Delete — delete every selected Location

⚠️ Warning: Bulk delete is irreversible. The deleted Locations disappear from every Finder, Map, and Set that referenced them.

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Soft-delete vs. hard-delete semantics on Location. The audit log captures the action, but undelete UX is not visible. Affects whether to caveat “irreversible” or document a recovery path.]

Search and filter within the panel

The panel’s search bar (top of the panel) filters the visible rows by title, address, tag, or custom field value as you type. The search is local to the panel — it doesn’t query the backend per keystroke.

For more complex filtering (e.g., “all Locations in California with the flagship tag and an Open Sundays value of true”), the practical move is to define a Set or use a Custom Field-based refinement on a Finder.

Edge cases and limitations

Duplicate addresses are allowed. Two Locations at the same address are valid (e.g., two different units in one building). DropAFinder doesn’t auto-detect duplicates; if you want to find them, sort by address.
Ungeocodable addresses fail to save with an error. If the autocomplete provider can’t resolve the address, save returns an error with the suggestion to enter coordinates manually.
Missing required fields: title, street address, city, state, postal code, country. Save returns a validation error listing the missing fields.
Locations referenced by deleted Maps or Sets continue to exist; only the relationship is removed.
Maximum Locations per Workspace is governed by your plan tier.

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Per-tier Location count limits (Free / Bronze / Premium). Affects this page and the Billing tier matrix.]

Where to next

Onboarding flow for first imports: Add locations
Group Locations into Categories: Categories
Add structured attributes: Tags and custom fields
AI-driven import for messy data: AI Location Import
AI-driven cleanup of existing data: AI Location Improvement