We're releasing an update to the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool tomorrow morning. The update will include support for Amazon's new listing templates and a bug fix for listing new products in Walmart's v3 format. There is also a small change in the way that you upload files when listing to Walmart.
Here are some FAQs:
- When Are You Releasing the Update to the Excel Add-In?
- How Do I List a New Product to Amazon Through the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool?
- Will I Be Impacted if I Am Still Using My Old Files to List to Amazon Through the Excel Add-In?
- How Do I Know Which Version of Amazon's Templates I'm Currently Using?
- If I Am Already Using Amazon's New Listing Templates, Do I Have to Change My Process?
- How Do I Update My Existing Amazon Listings Through Solid Commerce?
- What Are You Fixing With the Walmart v3 Listing Process?
- What Did You Change With the Walmart v3 Listing Process?
- How Do I Update the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool to the Latest Version?
When Are You Releasing the Update to the Excel Add-In?
Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, 10/9/19, between 10:00 AM and 10:30 AM (Pacific Time). The release will be quick and you will be able to use the new version of the Excel Add-In Tool immediately following the release.
How Do I List a New Product to Amazon Through the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool?
The listing process isn't going to change much. We will just be supporting Amazon's latest format with the Excel Add-In Tool instead of their older flat files.
If you aren't currently using Amazon's new templates, you will need to download one.
Here is the basic workflow for listing:
- Download a template from Amazon Seller Central - a one-time step.
- Populate the template with data.
- Add some Solid Commerce columns to the front of Amazon's file.
- As an optional step, delete some of Amazon's columns.
- Upload the file into Solid Commerce using our Excel Add-In Tool.
- Save your modified file for listing more products in the future.
For complete instructions, including field definitions and descriptions of which fields you can delete, please see Creating New Catalog Listings on Amazon Using the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool.
Will I Be Impacted if I Am Still Using My Old Files to List to Amazon Through the Excel Add-In?
Yes. You will be affected.
In order to support the new templates, we need to stop supporting Amazon's older flat files.
If you have been using the Solid Commerce Add-In Tool to list new products on Amazon, you are still using Amazon's old flat file format. You will need to download a new template from Amazon Seller Central. Once you complete that one-time process and add the Solid Commerce column headers, you will be ready to reuse the template and list the same way you do now.
For full instructions, see Creating New Catalog Listings on Amazon Using the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool.
How Do I Know Which Version of Amazon's Templates I'm Currently Using?
If you are currently using the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool to list new products to Amazon, you are using Amazon's old flat file templates.
If you are currently listing to Amazon through your Solid Commerce account using our upload center user interface, you are using Amazon's new templates.
Another way to tell is to find the original file that you downloaded from Amazon. If your file has a name like "Flat.File.Clothing_vXXXX.XXXX.xls," you are using the old flat file format. When you open the file and select the "Template" tab, the "TemplateType" in cell A1 will equal "clothing" or some other specific category name.
If your file has a name made up of several categories, like "Markers_Scales_MedicalKits.xlsm," you are using the new format. When you open the file and select the "Template" tab, cell A1 will be populated with "TemplateType=fptcustom."
If I Am Already Using Amazon's New Listing Templates, Do I Have to Change My Process?
No. You can continue to upload your Amazon templates through our upload center user interface.
While you don't need to use the Excel Add-In, it does provide you with an additional option. With just one upload, you can add items to your Solid Commerce Market List, populate all of the listing details for Amazon, and push your listings to Amazon.
How Do I Update My Existing Amazon Listings Through Solid Commerce?
In order to update your existing listings through Solid Commerce, you will want to import all of your listing details from Amazon into Solid Commerce. This process will update the formatting of the Amazon listing info in Solid Commerce and add missing data that we can't get through Amazon's API.
To get the data from Amazon, you will request access to a special "Category Listing Report" through Seller Central. You can upload the Category Listing Report directly into your Solid Commerce Amazon Market List.
For instructions, please see Migrating Amazon Listing Details Into Solid Commerce to Update Live Listings.
What Are You Fixing With the Walmart v3 Listing Process?
Some clients have been receiving errors from Walmart when attempting to list new products using the v3 format. These errors indicate that a series of optional attributes are missing data.
We found that during the Excel upload process, some of the data that clients provided wasn't being added to our database properly. We've resolved this issue.
What Did You Change With the Walmart v3 Listing Process?
Unlike with normal product attributes, when you upload attributes for Walmart, our system needs to know which Market List your Walmart listings are in and which template version you are using. This means that you must include the list name and walmart:version columns in any file with "walmart attr:..." column headers. You can populate the walmart:version column with 3. You must also select the Upload Product and Upload Marketplace options when you upload your file.
We updated the Excel template and upload instructions in our article about listing to Walmart, Listing to Walmart (Creating New Listings and Adding Yourself to Existing Listings).
The reason for this difference with Walmart is so that we can add support for Walmart Canada and tell the difference between v3 attributes and old v2 attributes.
This change is already live. It isn't part of the Excel update.
How Do I Update the Solid Commerce Excel Add-In Tool to the Latest Version?
After the release, the Add-In will automatically update itself the next time you close out of Excel completely and relaunch.
Comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.