The bulk import products option allows you to add products to your KartRocket store in bulk from a CSV file (commonly created in Excel, or provided by wholesalers and dropshippers), or an XML file.
It is a highly sophisticated tool, allowing you to import thousands of products very quickly. Since it creates changes in bulk, it is recommended that you use this tool very carefully, or contact support@kartrocket.com for help.
You can reach the Product Import section by navigating to the “Products” section in the top menu and then by clicking on the “Import Products” icon.
Note: the Load Settings Profile dropdown will be blank when you are performing an upload the first time. You can save your settings to a profile on Step 5. This will save all mappings and settings so that you don’t have to do this everytime. The next time you want to upload your files, you can simply pick the profile settings from the dropdown, and click “Load”. This will auto-set the right mapping so that you can quickly import the same file again.
Uploading Product Images
Before you upload your product data, you should upload your images first.
Important things to note before you upload images:
- Image file names should be all lower case, should contain no spaces and should contain no special characters. If they do, our import system will fix these for you.
E.g., you upload an image with the filename my product shot(1).jpg
The importer will convert this into my-product-shot1.jpg
While the image will still get uploaded successfully, if you have linked your image names in your excel file, you will need to fix those paths again. So it is better to ensure you have correct filenames to begin with.
- Each image should be less than 200 KB to optimize performance of your site. Also please ensure they’re in JPG format, white background and are less than 2000 px in width. These are standard for any ecommerce site and help providing your users with a faster browsing experience.
- Please do NOT upload more than 500 images at one time as it is known to cause performance issues both on the running site as well as on the upload process.
To upload images, click on the “Upload Images First” button:
- In the Image Manager, click on “Add Product Images”
- Now you can click on Browse to select images from your computer, or you can select your pictures and drag and drop them onto the text “DROP HERE”.
- When you upload your pictures, you will see tick marks to indicate the files are uploaded, but not processed yet
- Make sure you wait till you see all the thumbnails before closing the window
- Once the upload is finished, you can click outside the window to close it
That’s it! Your products are now uploaded.
Uploading Product Data
Now that you’ve uploaded all your images, you can proceed to uploading product data.
The process is divided into five steps:
a. Upload data or Fetch Feed: in this step you will (most likely) upload a file. For advanced users, or for users who're using their store as a dropshipper, can also import a dropshipper feed URL.
b. Set global settings for import: there are several settings related to products (such as subtract stock, tax class, etc.) that are set a global level. Those will be defined here.
c. Adjust import data: you can use this step if you want to perform real-time operations to the file/feed that is being uploaded.
For example, KartRocket requires that the image filename is prefixed with a “data/” path. If you don’t want to add that manually you can set that up as an adjustment and every time you import a file, it will automatically make an adjustment to the file at import.
This is for advanced users only. If you don’t know what to do with it, just click on Skip and make sure your data is in the right format in the excel file itself.
d. Field Mapping: this is step where you will map your CSV file fields to KartRocket product data fields. It is an important step.
e. Import: this is the final step where you will actually perform the import operation. Here you can also pick some options such as empty store before import, or add new products, update existing products, etc.
Step 1: Fetch Feed
Feed Source: Specify where the feed should come from. This can be either an uploaded File or a URL.
Import Feed URL: This field will only show if you choose URL as Feed Source. If you choose File it will change to a File upload box. Specify the URL or upload the file here.
Feed Format: Specify whether your feed is XML or CSV format.
CSV Field Delimiter: Determines character used to split your CSV file columns.
XML Product Tag: If you are uploading an XML file, you will need to specify the product tag surrounding each product (see details previous page). If you are uploading a CSV file, you will need to specify the delimiter used in your file.
Advanced:
First Row Is Headings: Untick this if your first CSV row is not headings, just product values.
Use Safe Headings: If there are blank heading rows, or invalid characters in your headings this will use default heading values instead.
Unzip Feed: If you upload a zip file, or the URL you specify hosts a zip file, the module can automatically unzip it once it is fetched. Check the box to enable this functionality.
File Encoding: The file encoding of your file. If you have a non UTF-8 file, or characters are not importing correctly. Change this to match your import file.
Step 2: Global Settings
Out of Stock Status: Determines the default Out of Stock Status each product will be given.
Subtract Stock: Determines the default value given for Subtract Stock for all products.
Requires Shipping: Determines the default value given to each product for the Requires Shiping field.
Minimum Quantity: The default minimum quantity that can be purchased for each product.
Product Status: Whether imported/updated products are set to enabled or disabled.
Weight Class: The default weight class for all products.
Length Class: The default length class for all products.
Tax Class: The default tax class for all products.
Customer Group: Sets the default customer group for options and discount prices.
Add Categories to Top Bar: Whether newly created categories should be automatically assigned to show in the top navigation bar of your site.
Add Product to: Whether products should appear in all applicable categories, or only the bottom level subcategory.
Category Delimiter: If your categories are in a list, delimited by a certain character, place that character here. Eg: for “Top Category > Sub Category” use “>” (without quotes).
Download Remote Images: Whether the script should attempt to download images from URLs in your feed. This should only be used when running the script from CLI, as it is likely to timeout otherwise.
Image Sub-folder: If you want your images in a different folder you can specify it here. If it does not exist it will be created.
Store: Just set this to “default”
Step 3: Operations
Operations allow you to modify your data before it enters the store. They run in sequence from top to bottom. This allows you to modify already modified information by adding a follow-on operation. Here are the ways this can be done:
Most Popular:
Adjust Price (Multiply): Allows you to multiply one value by another value. This is useful for adding tax or margins to your pricing.
Format: Multiply by [input value]
Example: Multiply price by 1.2
Adjust Price (Add): Adds a fixed number to your price. Useful for adjusting a constant markup value.
Format: Add [input value] to
Example: Add 10 to price
Split Category on Delimiter: Used to split the category on a delimiter (like >) into multiple columns for importing.
Format: Split on [delimiter]
Example: Split categories on >
Append Text to Image: Appends text to the image field. This is useful to build a correct image path or URL.
Format: Append [text] after
Example: Append .jpg after image
Prepend Text to Image: Prepend text to the image field. This is useful to build a correct image path or URL.
Format: Prepend [text] before
Example: Prepend data/ to image
Filter Products (equals): This allows you to remove a products where a field exactly matches another field. This is useful if you wish to remove all products with a certain stock level for example.
Format: Exclude products where equals [field value]
Example: Exclude products where stock equals 0
Filter Products (not equals): This allows you to remove a products where a field does not match a certain fields. For example you can remove all products where enable is not equal to yes.
Format: Exclude products where does not equal [field value]
Example: Exclude products where enabled does not equal yes
Advanced:
Append Text to Any Field: Choose a field to append text to. This is useful if you wish to craft your image field into the format required by KartRocket.
Format: Append [text] after
Example: Append .jpg after image
Prepend Text to Any Field: Choose a field to prepend text to. This is useful if you wish to craft your image field into the format required by KartRocket, but can also be used to modify other data.
Format: Prepend [text] before
Example: Prepend data/ to image
Multiply any Field: Allows you to multiply one value by another value. This is useful for adding tax or margins to your pricing.
Format: Multiply by [input value]
Example: Multiply price by 1.2
Add to any Field: Adds a fixed number to another number.
Format: Add [input value] to
Example: Add 10 to price
Split Any Field: This splits a field on a delimiter creating a new column for each field.
Format: Split on [delimiter]
Example: Split categories on >
Replace Text: Replace a piece of text for another piece of text inside a field. This is useful if you wish to adjust a particular piece of content.
Format: Replace [search text] with [replacement] in
Example: Replace .gif with .jpg in image
Remove Text: Select a field to remove text from, and input the text to remove in the Data field. This is useful when you have some generic piece of text you wish to remove.
Format: Remove [search text] in
Example: Remove LHAFA in description
Filter Products (containing): This allows you to remove a products where a field contains a certain value.
Format: Exclude products where contains [field value]
Example: Exclude products where description contains skip
Filter Products (not containing): This allows you to remove a products where a field does not contain a certain value.
Format: Exclude products where does not contain [field value]
Example: Exclude products where description does not contain include
Clone Field: This allows you to duplicate a field into a new column. Useful to back up a field, before you modify it with another operation.
Format: Duplicate to [new_column]
Example: Duplicate price to original price
Append Field to Field: This allows you to add one field on to another with a separator. Particularly useful for building Option and Discount import formats from different columns.
Format: Append to separated by [separation text]
Example: Append keywords to description separated by
Merge multi-row products: This operation merges multiple rows of products to create a delimited value. This is particularly useful when importing Options, as you can merge all rows and import the correct options for each product.
Format: Common field Merge the following fields
Example: Common field sku Merge the following fields size color
The merge multi-row products function is specifically for combining multiple products where there are some differing values in each row (such as size and color). This will allow each value to be imported as an option if the new merged field is mapped to Option in Step 4.
Step 4: Field Mapping
Field Mapping
Field mapping allows you to match your field names or headings to be imported to KartRocket’s available fields. The CSV column headings or the XML tag names do not have to match KartRocket’s fields.
Also, there is no minimum number of fields that must be inputted, so any or all fields can be left blank—these fields will be given sensible default values in each product where required.
If you wish to deliberately overwrite a field to a null value (for example, you wish to remove the special price of the products), reference a field that is empty in your file. This way the module will import the empty value as the new special price and thus ‘delete’ the existing special price.
Product Status: This takes a binary value 0/1 but can also handle disabled/no/off and will treat other values as 1
Category: Products can be imported with nested categories (e.g., “Computers > Desktop”); add sub-category fields by clicking the More è button and adding a vertical column. Multiple categories can be added for products by selecting the More ê button creating another row. This allows products to belong to more than one category (e.g. “DVDs” and “Digital files”)
Attribute: Product attributes can be imported—reference the attribute’s name (e.g., from the example in the “XML Format”, enter “type” without quotation marks). The field name will be used for the Attribute name, and the value in the field for each product will be used for the Attribute value.
If you wish to import a particular attribute structure you can do this by using a ':' separated list in your attribute field. This is then imported as '<group_name>:<attribute_name>:<attribute_value>' and creates the appropriate attribute group, attribute name and attribute value.
Options: Product options can be imported – see the section below on Product Options for the exact requirements for successful import. Use the More button to add multiple product options.
Image: This field takes the path to an image on your server. E.g 'data/image.jpg'. If you enabled 'Download Remote Images' in Step 2 this field can also take a URL to the location of the image.
Additional Images: Additional images can be imported – simply reference the field, using the More button to add multiple additional image fields.
Step 5: Import
Empty store before import: If you wish to reset your store, you can choose empty store before import to delete all existing products, categories, options, and manufacturers. Ideally you should only use this when initially setting up your store
New Items: Specify what to do with new items from your feed. You can either add them as normal, or skip them to run a pure update only.
Existing Items: You can choose what to do with items in your feed that are also in your store already. You can either update them based on new data from the feed, or simply skip them to only add new products.
Items in store but not in file: Specify what to do with items in your store that are not in the file. If your supplier has stopped selling a product you may want these deleted, disabled or ignored.
Identify Existing Products by Matching Field: In order to identify existing items, you will need to have a field in your feed that matches the same field in your KartRocket store. Here you can specify which field this is, choosing between Model, Name or SKU. It is recommended that you use Model or SKU in preference to Name, as the match must be exact in order to identify existing products. Using Name is more risky.
Items to Import: This setting lets you make sub sets of products to import. This can be particularly useful if you find your server is struggling with the load of adding / updating all the products. To use the setting select 'Range' then add a range of products say 1 -> 1000. Once completed you can add more products by running it from 1001 -> 2000 and so on doing manageable subsets your server can handle.
Profiles: By typing a name of a profile in the top right input box you can save all settings up to this point for easy loading.
Watch a step by step instructional video!