This issue occurs due to Salesforce platform limits, most commonly in orgs using Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). While Account imports may complete without issue, Contact imports often trigger significantly more Salesforce automation, which can exceed Salesforce’s allowed Apex CPU time.
When Contacts are created, NPSP runs extensive behind-the-scenes processes such as triggers, flows, rollups, and validations (for example, via the TDTM_Contact framework). By default, Apsona sends records to Salesforce in batches of up to 200 records at a time. If Salesforce cannot finish all required automation for those records within the CPU time limit, it rejects the entire batch with an error similar to:
CANNOT_INSERT_UPDATE_ACTIVATE_ENTITY: Apex CPU time limit exceeded
This behavior is not caused by Apsona, incorrect mappings, or file size. It is a Salesforce execution limit reached during Contact creation.
How to Resolve the Issue:
The most effective workaround is to reduce the Apsona import batch size, allowing Salesforce to process fewer Contacts per transaction and complete all automation safely.
Recommended steps:
Go to Apsona → Settings → Connection Settings
Reduce the Batch Size from 200 to:
20 or 10 (start here)
Reduce further to 1 if needed
Re-run the Contact import without refreshing the page
With smaller batches, Salesforce has enough CPU time to complete all NPSP automation per Contact, and the import will proceed successfully.