Bulk Importing & Updating

You can bulk create new items and bulk update existing ones using spreadsheets saved as .CSV (comma separated values) files. If your account has variants turned on, you can also bulk create, update and delete the variants of your items.

Getting Started

First, go to your Inventory List, click on the down caret button next to "New Item" and select Import Items from the dropdown menu:

This will take you to the Import Items page where you will "Choose your Import Method."

info

SKUs in your spreadsheet must be unique and at least two characters long

Create Items

Select Create Items if your spreadsheet contains new items only.

Upsert Items

Select Upsert Items if your spreadsheet contains new and existing items. This import tool uses the SKU column in your spreadsheet to determine if an item exists or not; if a SKU in the spreadsheet is not found in your inventory, then it will be created. Otherwise that item's information will be updated using columns/fields that you manually select.

Update Items

Updating items uses the 20 character Propcart Item ID instead of the SKU. Not only is this method faster, but it also provides the ability to bulk modify your SKUs (which you can't do if you're using the Upsert Items method).

To update items, first export a spreadsheet of your inventory.

Open your spreadsheet in a spreadsheet program like Excel or Google Sheets. We'll use Google Sheets in our examples.

Notice the column in your exported spreadsheet called Item ID. We'll need this column for the update later.

Delete all other columns you don't want to update to make the spreadsheet easier to work with.

Update your Category Schema

A common use-case for the Update Items method is to update the departments, categories, subcategories and tags of your inventory items when your Category Schema changes.

Freeze the First Row

In Excel or Google Sheets, freeze the first row. This will keep the header row at the top of your window and make it easy for you to identify each column.

Sort your Spreadsheet by Column

You can then click on the down caret in a column header to sort the spreadsheet by that column alphabetically (A to Z) or reverse alphabetically (Z to A):

And since your first row is frozen, it won't get sorted into the other rows.

You can then start bulk updating your Departments, Categories and Subcategories. You can do this several different ways.

Find and Replace

1. Select the column you want to bulk update and then select Edit > Find and replace:

2. Enter the text you want to Find (e.g. "8 Track Players")

3. Enter the text you want to replace [the found text] with (e.g. Audio Players).

4. Click the Replace all button.

Cell Drag Down

Hover over the bottom right corner of a cell. Once the cursor changes to crosshairs, click and drag to copy the contents (or formula) of that cell and paste it into the cells immediately below it.

Copy One Cell and Paste into Multiple Selected Cells

1. Copy (Command or Control + C) a cell that has the data you want to paste
2. Select a range of new cells that you want to paste into
3. Paste (Command or Control + V) the data into the selected cells

Download your Spreadsheet

Once you're done editing your spreadsheet, make sure your spreadsheet still has the Item ID column, and then download it as a CSV:

Import your Changes into Propcart

Go back to the Update Items import method and Upload your CSV file in the file dropzone.

Follow the import wizard to map the spreadsheet columns to the Propcart item fields and complete the update.

Upsert Variants

Select Upsert Variants to create, update and delete the variants of items that are already in your inventory, such as the sizes and prices of a print. This method only appears if your account has variants turned on.

Each row of your spreadsheet is one variant. The Parent SKU column says which item the variant belongs to, and the Variant ID column says whether the row creates a new variant or changes an existing one.

Download your Variants

The easiest way to start is with a spreadsheet of the variants you already have. Click download your variants on the Upsert Variants page, or go to your Reports Page and select Download Variants.

The download already has the column headings the import looks for, so when you upload it back, its columns are mapped for you.

Spreadsheet Columns

Column	Required	Description
Parent SKU	Yes	SKU of the item the variant belongs to
Variant ID	No	Leave blank to create a new variant. To update or delete a variant, use its Variant ID from your variants download
Title	Yes	Name of the variant, like "Small" or "16 x 20". 2 to 32 characters
Description	No	Up to 150 characters
Price	Yes	Price of the variant
Quantity	No	A whole number, 0 or more
Position	No	Order of the variant on your webstore, starting at 1
Delete	No	TRUE deletes the variant. Leave it blank or enter FALSE to keep it

Title and Price can be left blank on rows that delete a variant.

Your variants download also has Parent Title, Parent Item ID, Linked SKU and Dashboard URL columns to help you find your way around the spreadsheet. The import ignores them, so you don't need to delete them.

A spreadsheet can have up to 10,000 rows.

Create, Update and Delete Variants

• Create: leave the Variant ID blank. The new variant is added after the item's other variants, unless you give it a Position.
• Update: enter the variant's Variant ID. The variant's Title and Price are replaced with the ones in your spreadsheet. You can change a variant's title this way, since the Variant ID, not the title, says which variant to update.
• Delete: enter the variant's Variant ID and add a Delete column with TRUE. The download doesn't include a Delete column, so add one to your spreadsheet when you need it.

Variants that aren't in your spreadsheet are left as they are, so your spreadsheet only needs the rows you want to change.

If you don't map a column to the optional Description, Quantity or Position fields, existing variants keep what they have. If you do map one, an empty cell clears that field: an empty Description cell erases the description, and an empty Quantity cell removes the quantity. An empty Position cell keeps the variant where it is.

caution

If you don't map a column to Variant ID, every row creates a new variant. The last step of the import warns you about this before you click Complete Import.

Variant Order

Position sets the order of an item's variants on your webstore. After the import, each item's variants are numbered again from 1 with no gaps:

• A variant with a Position moves to that place.
• A variant without one keeps its place among the others.
• New variants without a Position go last, in the order they appear in your spreadsheet.

If a Position matches the place of a variant that has no Position in your spreadsheet, the variant with the Position goes first.

What the Import Can't Change

The import stops with a validation error, and changes nothing, if a row:

• has a Parent SKU that isn't in your inventory, or that more than one item uses
• has a Variant ID that isn't one of that item's variants
• has the same Variant ID as another row
• belongs to a package (packages can't have variants; see Bundles)
• creates a variant on a Digital Download item. Add those on the item's Advanced tab, where you can upload the variant's file
• changes a variant that is another inventory item, chosen with Physical Inventory Item when the variant was added. These variants have a Linked SKU in your variants download. Edit them on the item's Advanced tab

Fix the rows listed on the error page, then upload your spreadsheet again.

tip

There is no undo. Before you change or delete existing variants, download your variants so you have a backup. The last step of the import links to the download.

After the import, Review previous import on the Import Items page lists the items whose variants changed.

Troubleshooting

When using the import tool, you might experience timeout or broken connection failures that look like this:

This happens most to users on internet connections outside North America.

This error is probably not a Propcart Dashboard bug. Instead, it might be due to your internet network connection dropping or blocking the QUIC protocol Chrome uses to talk to Propcart's servers. This causes long-running imports to disconnect mid-way.

You can try to fix this problem two ways:

Disable Chrome’s QUIC protocol:

1. Copy and paste this into Chrome's address bar: chrome://flags/#enable-quic

2. Select Disabled under the Experimental QUIC protocol section.

3. Restart Chrome

This forces HTTP/2 over TCP instead of QUIC.

Then try importing again. Hopefully this fixes the problem.

Other Possible Solutions:

If disabling Chrome's QUIC protocol doesn't work, try one of the following, but not all at once:

• Different network (mobile hotspot or your home internet connection)

• Disable any VPN being used

• Use a Wired Ethernet connection if possible (instead of a WIFI connection)

• Incognito window (so no extensions are running that could possibly interfere with the connection)

• Another browser (Firefox can behave better here)

If you solved this problem, please let us know what worked.