Imports

An import writes the costs and the price limits from your own spreadsheet onto listings you already have, a thousand of them in one pass.

An import takes a spreadsheet of your own and writes the numbers in it onto listings you already have. It can set your cost, the lowest and the highest price you will sell at, and the manufacturer’s MAP and MSRP. It can also set a fixed price, which strategy a listing is on, and whether repricing is paused. All of that comes out of one file, one row per listing.

It only ever changes listings that are already here. A row for a SKU you do not have is an error on that row and never a new listing, because your listings come from the accounts you connected.

Most people import after a supplier sends a new cost list, or when a few thousand listings need a minimum price before they will reprice at all. The other way to change many listings at once is bulk actions, which needs no file and covers only the strategy and the pause switch.

You get to all of it from Uploads in the sidebar down the left. Imports is the first of three entries in the second list, and Create import above the table opens your file picker. The table under it is every import your team has run.

Before you start

What your role lets you do

Below Manager there is no Create import button on the toolbar at all, so there is nothing grayed out to find. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

An import cannot be undone

How to import a file

1. 1

   Pick your file

   From Uploads in the sidebar down the left, stay on Imports and click Create import above the table. Your file picker opens on its own. Pick a CSV or an XLSX.

2. 2

   Check what it matched for you

   A dialog opens over the page with your file already read. Map Columns is the panel on the left, one row per field you can write, each with a dropdown beside it. Every field whose name matched one of your headers is filled in already.

3. 3

   Say which column names your listings

   The first row of Map Columns is SKU / Product ID, marked Required. Open the dropdown beside it and pick the column with your SKU in it.

4. 4

   Map the numbers you are changing

   Work down the rest of the list and pick your column beside each field you want to write, such as Cost or Min Price. Leave every other field on (Skip). You need at least one field besides the identifier.

5. 5

   Read the preview and import

   Live Preview, the panel on the right, shows the first 3 rows of every field you mapped. When it is clean, click the import button at the bottom right, with your row count on it, and answer anything it asks you.

That is the whole flow. Your import appears at the top of the table right away and moves through a few statuses while it runs. It ends with a count of the rows that worked and the rows that did not, and you get an email when it finishes.

Everything below goes through that dialog and that table one piece at a time. You do not need any of it for a simple import.

Every option in detail

The dialog is two panels and never more than one screen. Map Columns is on the left and Live Preview is on the right, and every decision you make is on one of them. The sections below follow you from the file you pick to the button you click.

What an import can write

What each of those numbers then does to a price is on pricing on a listing, one field at a time.

Four of them depend on the strategy. B2B Price, B2B Minimum Price, B2B Maximum Price and Compare Price only work on a listing whose strategy has that feature switched on. Map one of the four when no strategy of yours has it, and the dialog stops the import and names the setting you are missing. Map one when some of your strategies have it and some do not, and the rows on a strategy without it come back as errors.

Choosing your file

Create import is above the imports table, and it opens your file picker. There is no template to download and no order your columns have to be in, because you say which column is which in the dialog that follows.

What your file needs is one row per listing and one column that names it. Every other column is yours to map or ignore, so a supplier file with 40 columns in it works as well as one with 2.

A workbook with several sheets opens on the first one, and a dropdown appears next to the file name at the top of the dialog. Pick another sheet and the dialog reads that one instead. One import covers one sheet.

Save an older .xls as .xlsx before you import it. The file picker takes .xls and the import then ends on Failed.

If the dialog cannot read what you picked, it shows you a drop area in place of the two panels, and you drag another file onto it.

Mapping your columns

Map Columns is the left panel of the dialog. Every field you can write is a row in it, with a dropdown listing your own column headers. Pick your header beside the field you want it to fill, and leave (Skip) on the rest.

The dialog fills in what it recognizes the moment it opens, by reading your header names. It knows more names than the ones it prints, so a column headed cogs comes out as Cost and a column headed floor comes out as Min Price. Those names are English whatever language you use the app in, so read what it did before you trust it.

Clear All, at the top right of the same panel, empties every dropdown at once. That is quicker than undoing a bad guess one field at a time.

Two things turn the import button on: SKU / Product ID has to be mapped, and one more field besides it. Hover the button while it is off and it tells you which of the two you are missing.

Reading the live preview

Live Preview is the right panel of the dialog, and you get one card in it per field you map. Each card is the field name and the first 3 values from your column, with +1,247 more beside them so you know how much you are not looking at.

The preview shows the number that will be stored, not the number you typed, and that is what makes it worth reading. Type 19,99 and the card shows 1999.00, because a comma is read as a thousands separator and removed. Write your prices with a period.

A card turns red when a value in that column cannot be used, with a count of how many rows are like it, and the import button goes off. A card turns amber for something that is worth knowing and stops nothing.

Clearing a price instead of setting one

A cell in a price column has three meanings, and the empty one is the one people get wrong.

An empty cell changes nothing, so a file only needs the columns you are actually changing, and a gap in one of them is safe. That is also why clearing a number takes a deliberate 0 and cannot happen by leaving a cell out.

A file with a zero anywhere in a price column asks you first. Clear price values? tells you how many cells will be erased, Yes, continue runs the import, and Go back returns you to the dialog.

Choosing which listings the import can touch

A row finds its listing by name, and one name can be on two listings when you sell the same SKU on two accounts. Deciding which of them an import may touch is what the scope is for.

With more than one connected account, or one account with more than one region, a small dialog called Confirm import scope appears when you click import. It asks Which listings should this import update? and gives you an Account dropdown, plus a region dropdown under it when that account has several.

Pick the account when the same SKU sells on two of them. Left on All Accounts, a row matching two listings is an error and neither one is written. Narrowing the scope is the fix, and the message on that row says so.

With one account and one region you never see this dialog, and your import is scoped to them anyway. Whatever it ended up as, you get it back in the Account and Region columns of the imports table.

Limits

What an import cannot do

What an import does to your listings

Matching a row to a listing

SKU / Product ID takes either one. The Repricer looks for a listing with that SKU, and for a listing with that channel product ID, which on Amazon is the ASIN. One column covers both, so a file of ASINs and a file of SKUs both work and you do not tell it which you sent.

The match is exact, capital letters included. Nothing is matched on part of a name, so ABC-1 never finds abc-1 and never finds ABC-10.

Two kinds of row are worth knowing about. A row whose name matches nothing gets No listing found with SKU 'ABC-1' and counts as an error. A row with an empty name cell is skipped with a warning and no error.

What changes the moment a row is written

An import is not a note for later. Every row that goes in does the same thing an edit on the listing would.

A strategy name has to match one built for that listing’s region, and it is matched on the name you gave it. A name that exists somewhere else in your organization gets its own message, so you can tell a typo from a strategy in the wrong region.

Cost, MAP and MSRP on a listing the PIM owns

A listing matched to a product in your PIM gets those three numbers from the PIM, and an import cannot write them there. It skips those three cells, writes the rest of the row as normal, and leaves you a warning: Cost, MAP and MSRP on this listing are managed by your PIM connection and were skipped. Edit them in the PIM instead.

Nothing else about the row is affected, so a minimum price in the same row still goes in. See the PIM connection for which listings are matched and how to unmatch one.

When something goes wrong

Watching your import run

Your import appears in the table right away and moves through these statuses on its own, with no page to refresh.

Completed does not mean every row worked. A file where 900 rows of 1,000 failed still ends Completed. A bad row is counted and does not fail the import around it, and Failed is for a file that could not be read at all. So read the Success and Errors columns, never the status on its own.

Whoever started the import gets an email when it finishes, with the same counts in it. Nobody else on your team is told. You can turn that email off under Import complete in your notification settings.

Reading the imports table

Newest is at the top, and the toolbar above the table has the same search and filters as every other table here.

Errors the dialog stops you on

The dialog reads every row of your file before anything is uploaded, and the import button stays off until all of them are clean. Hover it and the count is in the tooltip, as Fix 12 validation errors to import.

That is stricter than it sounds, because one unusable cell anywhere in the file stops all of it. You have two ways out, and both are quick. Fix the cell in your file and pick it again, or set that field back to (Skip) and import everything else.

Errors that only show up after it runs

The dialog checks your file. It cannot check your file against your listings, so a second set of problems only appears once the import is running. Every one of these is one row, and the rest of the file still imports.

cannot exceed is the one that surprises people, because the dialog had said your file was fine. It was fine. That message compares what you sent against what the listing already had, and only the listing knows that.

Getting the error report

An import that ends with any errors or warnings gets an Error file action in its row, at the right edge of the imports table. Click it, pick CSV or Excel in Select file format, and the file downloads.

The report is your own file back with one column added. Every row that had a problem is in it, with your own columns untouched. A column called Error message at the end says what went wrong on that row. So you fix the rows where they are and import the same file again, which touches only the rows in it. The added column is one you never map, so it does nothing on the way back in.

That report is kept for 7 days after the import finishes. After that the counts stay in the table, the action is grayed out, and hovering it tells you the detail is gone.

Canceling an import

Cancel is in every row of the imports table, and you can use it while an import is Pending, Validating or Processing. Click it and you get Import cancellation requested. The row turns Cancelled when the import actually stops.

Canceling stops the rest of your file. It does not take back the rows already written, and a few more can still go in between your click and the stop. On a finished import the action is grayed out and tells you which way it finished.

The messages in the corner of the screen

Where to go next