Getting all your products quickly onto the Magaroo platform is a key step in getting ready to sell. This help document will take you through how to create a file that lists all of your products. This file can be quickly uploaded to Magaroo.
Here at Magaroo we know that every business has its own way of doing things. For this reason we use comma separated value (csv) files as the means to let sellers upload list of products and/or product updates.
The product comma separated file or csv file is a file that contains lines of data for your products. The first line of the file must be a list of the name of each product property that you want to upload. The other lines of the file will be a list of the values for these properties for each product that you want to upload. In a comma separated value file, the list in each line of the file is made using commas to separate each list item.
For example, lets say you want to create a simple csv file to upload a set of product names and descriptions. the file might look like this.
Name,Description
Apple,Green Apples from Kent
Pear,Pears from Somerset
This file could be written in a simple text editor such as Notepad on a PC or TextEdit on a Mac.
When you create the file with a text editor be sure to save the file with a .csv extension. For example, products.csv. Many text editors may automatically save the file as a text file with a .txt file extension. To save a file as .csv you may have to choose to save the file as .csv type or explicitly specify the .csv filename extension when you enter the filename.
Spreadsheet software can often be used to open csv files or create csv files from a spreadsheet file. When you open a csv file using a spreadsheet program the lines of the file will be read into the rows of a spreadsheet. The list of items in each row will be converted to a set of columns in the spreadsheet. For the example above the spreadsheet might look like the table below.
| Name | Description |
| Apple | Green Apples from Kent |
| Pears | Pears from Somerset |
Using spreadsheet software can be an efficient way to edit a file of products. Your accountancy, till or EPOS systems may be capable of creating a file of products that you can edit in a spreadsheet ready to upload to Magaroo. Popular spreadsheet programs include, Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers and Google Sheets. In particular Google Sheets is free software that can be accessed over the internet using a web browser. For more information regarding Google Sheets visit https://www.google.com/sheets/about/.
When you create the file with a spreadsheet program be sure to save the file with a .csv extension. For example, products.csv.
If you want to get started quickly then you can download and edit one of our example files to and edit it to match your product list. Upload the file you make to add the list of your products to Magaroo.
Clicking on simple example will download a simple example file that lists the minimum amount of information required to get up and running. Alternatively, clicking on complete example will download a file with examples for all product properties as well as lists of all possible values for those properties that must be chosen from a list. For example 'Country of Origin'. In the Product Properties section below we describe each of the available product properties, which are required, which are optional, and which require a specific value from a list of values in more detail.
Once you are ready to upload your file then from the Upload Products page click the button. A file chooser will open, browse to and select the relevant CSV file that you have created on your computer or tablet. Click the button to upload your file to Magaroo. Once your file has been uploaded Magaroo will try to read each of your products and validate the product properties you supplied. When this process is complete a list of the products you have uploaded is shown. If Magaroo has encountered any problems reading a product's properties these issues will be shown.
For each product in your file you will see one of three types of status message.
If a product with 'Your ID' does not already exist in your Magaroo store and all the product properties have been successfully understood then that product will be displayed in green with a status message that says ' All fields have been successfully read'. When you continue this product will be created in your store on Magaroo.
If a product with 'Your ID' already exists in your Magaroo store and all the product properties have been successfully understood then that product will be displayed in orange with a status message that says ' A product with this ID already exists and will be updated'. When you continue the existing product will be updated with the new property values you have supplied.
If any of the product property values that you specified in your file could not be understood by Magaroo then that product is displayed in grey with a staus message that includes' ' Could not parse field ...' along with the name of that field (property). There may be multiple properties (fields) that were not understood. Each one that could not be read (parsed) will be displayed in the status message. Because some of the properties for this product were not understood it will be ignored when you continue.
Please review the status of each of the products and scroll to the bottom of the displayed product list. If you are happy with you review you can click on the button to upload new products or update existing products.
The most common issues that arise when Magaroo reads your file of products occur when a product property requires a specific value from a defined list.
For example, the product property 'Sold' specifies how a product is sold. This property can take one of three possible values from the list below.
If you have specified anything other than the above three values for the 'Sold' property Magaroo will not be able to read that property. Other properties that require a specific value from a defined list are Country and Currency. You can learn more about each of the product properties you can specify in your file in the Product Properties section below.
We have already briefly discussed properties such as Name and Description for a product in the Overview section above. In this section we list all the product properties that you can specify in any file you wish to upload. Some properties are always required, others are optional. If you want to use a property remember the property name must always appear in the lst of property names in the first line of the file and then the value for that property must appear for every other line of the file.
The following is a description of each of the fields that can be used. If you want to add a particular field to the CSV file please make sure that you use the correct heading. Alternatively if you want to add those fields at a later stage you can access them from the edit function on the Product Manager.
'Your ID' is any ID that you have that uniquely identifies the product to you. It may be a name, code number or something that interacts with your internal stock or EPOS system. If you do not already have an existing ID then you are at liberty to use whatever suits you e.g. Apple 1 , Pizza 2 or simply 1,2,3,4 etc. This is a required field and every product you create or update must have this field. If you are uploading a file of products that you have already uploaded then this field is used to determine if any of the products you are uploading already exist in Magaroo. If this is the case then that product is updated with the property values you have specifies in your file. If no product exists with this ID then a new product is created.
This is a required field and is the name by which the product will be displayed and also how customers can search for the product.
Here you specify how the product is sold- by kg weight, in packs or individually. These are your only choices- but you must specify one for each product.
Relates to the above and is the price relative to how the product is sold i.e price per kg, price per item, price per pack
Specify the currency in which a product is sold. The currency property must be chosen from a list of currency codes that Magaroo supports. For products sold in Pounds Sterling (£) this property should be set to GBP.
When a customer clicks on your product the first thing that they will see is a description of the product, which you can set here. The description should require any salient information including any informtion you are legally required to provide as a seller.
If you are using a text editor and want to include commas in your description then you must enclose your description in quotation marks. For example, "Apples from Taunton, Somerset." We have had to enclose this description in quotation marks as the text includes a comma between the words Taunton and Somerset. If we had not done this then the description would have been read as mulptiple product properties because of the comma.
If you are using a spreadsheet program to create your file enclosing your description in quotation marks is unnecessary as your spreadsheet program should automatically do this if it is required.
This is where you can set which category a product fits into e.g salad, apples, beef, pizza etc. Customers can search by category from your storefront so this is a useful field to add. Some products can of course fit within multiple categories. If so then you can list multiple categories here. Simply make sure that there is a comma between them e.g meat, game, diced.
If you are using a text editor then you must enclose your categories in quotation marks if there are more than one and you have used commas. For example, "meat,game,diced". We have had to enclose this list of categories in quotation marks as the text includes a comma between the different categories. If we had not done this then the categories would have been read as multiple product properties because of the commas.
If you are using a spreadsheet program to create your file enclosing your categories in quotation marks is unnecessary as your spreadsheet program should automatically do this if it is required.
This is potentially an important field to add depending on how you wish your products to be displayed. If you do not complete this field then by default all of your products will be listed and displayed in your store in alphabetical order. This works well if you are a grocer, butcher, fishmonger etc. People can still filter by category if you set this as above.
However if there is a particular order that you want your products to be shown in, then this is where you can set that order. If you simply want everything to be run in a particular order, then if you mark/ rank that position with a number eg 1, 2...100 against each product, that is the order in which they will be displayed in your shopfront. If you are uploadong from a CSV file then start with '001 and then '002 etc.
You may want to group a particular set of products- e.g starters, main courses, salads etc. If you set Sort ID as “1 Starter” for all of your starters, then they will all be grouped together, displayed first, and then sorted alphabetically within that group. If you mark all of your main courses as “2 main” then likewise they will be shown second, after all of the starters, and then alphabetically within the main category, and so on.
This is an optional field that allows you to set the country of origin of a product. However if you are completing this field it is important that you use the correct country name. If you are choosing countries outside of the United Kingdom it may be easier to add this at the end from the “edit” function within the product manager. If you click on the “please select” and the drop down box you will get to choose from a list of countries. Alternatively if you download the “complete example” file you will see all of the official country names listed alphabetically or you can view a list of all the country names that Magaroo understands here.
This you want to identify a product as locally sourced you can set the 'local' property to true. If you are entering this within a CSV file simply fill in TRUE or FALSE within the field in the CSV.
By default if the 'local' property is not included in your file it will not be set for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
This is the VAT rate that is included in your price- which is displayed to customers. It does not affect your price and is for reporting purposes only. You should enter the figure as the percentage rate. For example if your sales tax rate is 20% the value of this property should be 20.
By default if the 'sales tax rate pct' property is not included in your file it will be set to false for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
If you have a product that is currently in stock then set this to “true”. If however it is “in season” but currently you are out of stock then set it to “false”. If you look at your store front you will see that your product is still showing in your store front but is marked “sorry this is currently out of stock”.
By default if the 'in stock' property is not included in your file it will be set to false for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
As this section is all about uploading new products for the first time then we can assume that the product is available. In which case select “true”. If at a later date you want to remove it from your storefront this is dealt with on the Product Manager Help page.
By default if the 'available' property is not included in your file it will be set to false for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
Although this is an optional field, it is particularly helpful for certain types of business where items are sold by weight- mainly food sales such as grocers, butchers, fishmongers. If you sell and price an item by weight, then if you complete this field then as the customer adds a certain weight to their basket, this will allow us/them to estimate the number of products that they are adding. For example , if you sell butternut squash by weight, and the average weight is 0.8 kg then when that weight is reached, it will estimate that the customer will receive 1 butternut squash. Our consistent feedback from users has been that this field is important as it allows them to ‘picture’ how many of an item they will receive.
By default if the 'average item weight' property is not included in your file it will not be set for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
This field is useful when a product is sold by kg weight. You can set the minimum increment or increase in weight you want to allow when a customer clicks on the + button to add to their order size. In the example above for butternut squash, as typically you do not want to sell part of a butternut squash , you would set the minimum order increment to be the same as the average item weight. So every time the customer clicks on the + button the weight increases by 0.8kg and the estimated number increases by 1.
By default if the 'minimum order incerement' property is not included in your file it will not be set for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
This is the minimum amount you are prepared to allow for an order. Continuing with the Butternut squash example, if you only sell them as whole, then you would likewise set this to 0.8kg.
By default if the 'minimum order quantity' property is not included in your file it will not be set for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
This is an optional field which allows you to set the maximum quantity of any product that you are prepared to offer for sale.
By default if the 'maximum order quantity' property is not included in your file it will not be set for a new product or will keep any existsing value for any product being updated.
In addition to the above you can specify other the other product properties listed below if desired. These properties can be set for a product. However, Magaroo does not currently use these. They are instead reserved for use by future Magaroo features that are still in development,
Any questions please contact us at team@magaroo.com
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