Bulk Products Import Tool

[Guest JeannieM]

Hello!

I'm brand new to Cube Cart and to this forum too. Go gently on me and talk to me as if I'm 12, which I'm not.

I have some 10,000 products, or more, to upload to my store. I've read the "How to use the bulk products import tool" page. It says to add those certain column headers. I tried a couple of sample products this way and it works fine.

My question is this. My products are on my supplier's MS Excel spreadsheet, saved as CSV (Comma Delimited). There are many more Data Fields in theirs. These are:

Short Descriptions

Long Descriptions

Stock Code - whether they're in stock, out of stock, etc

Available Code - available, back ordered, discontinued

Born - date product was added

Product Class - SR = Rings; NK = Necklaces, etc

Material Code - Sterling, Stainless, Gold, etc

Weight

Price 2, which is the price of the item on sale; if price2 = price, then item is NOT on sale

Subcategory

What do I do with all these extra fields? Do I have to cut and paste the columns that coincide with Cube Cart's column headers?

I'll wait until I hear from someone before attempting to do anything. I don't want to mess up.

AND ALSO, how many products can I import a a time?

Thanks a lot!

:)

[vokf]

Hi, the CSV importer is fairly limited, in that it will only bring in a few fields, even though there are a few more fields in the product database.

There is a mod to bulk import, and this will be much more flexible than the built-in system.

Alternatively, if this data is important, it would be possible to hire a coder to add some of the additional fields to the database and import the data.

If the supplier is providing this data regularly (as stock changes and/or products appear/removed), then the other consideration is that if you delete products (and then re-import) then the product URL will change (causing you search engine problems).

The fields that could be imported into CubeCart would be;

-Long Descriptions

-Weight (note: can be Kg or Lbs, not mixed)

-Price 2, which is the price of the item on sale; if price2 = price, then item is NOT on sale (note: this is roughly how cubecart "sale"" mode works)

The category field is a number (which references a list of categories), and so these can be brought in, but may require some magic in the spreadsheet, OR coding;

-Subcategory

-Product Class - SR = Rings; NK = Necklaces, etc

-Material Code - Sterling, Stainless, Gold, etc

WIth 10,000 products, manual movement of products is not an option. You'll need some kind of automated system, that will place the product into the correct category.

These fields are not implemented;

-Stock Code - whether they're in stock, out of stock, etc

-Available Code - available, back ordered, discontinued

There is a "product code", which is either auto-generated, or can be manually entered (its your stock reference). Currently, there is only a stock level (number of units in stock), and there is no field for back-order/discontinued.

So, depending on the budget for the store, you may get away with the built-in system, or the 3rd party mod, or for a fully automated system. I would advise running a full account backup and running a test import of 10 products using the internal system.

If you can live with this, then great, otherwise try to work out your requirements and look over at http://www.cubecartforums.org for a 3rd party mod, or hire a developer to assist.

Regards,

Jason

[Guest JeannieM]

Thanks for all that information, Jason. Are you talking about a specific 3rd party mod? Or are there several? I'm not sure what I'd be looking for but would be interested in checking this option out.

Jeannie

[Robsta]

Thanks for all that information, Jason. Are you talking about a specific 3rd party mod? Or are there several? I'm not sure what I'd be looking for but would be interested in checking this option out.

Jeannie

Third-party mods can be found in the third-party forum: cubecartforums.org.