Importing Products and Services

HandiFox Online allows you to batch import products and services from an Excel file, as opposed to manually creating item by item.

To import products and services from an Excel file, go to Inventory → Item List and click  Import Orders.

 Before importing your Excel file, make sure you follow the instructions described in the Import Item Guide section in Step 1 of the import process

In Step 1 of the import process click Browse, locate you file and add/open it. 

 In this window you can first download a sample file and fill it out with the data you want to import and, import it afterwards.

Click Next.

In Step 2, you have 2 options.

1. You can specify whether you want to add all he records in your import file as new items 
   
2. Update existing items that match the specified parameter and add as new items the records that don't match the specified parameters.
   

Add as new items. This adds all items in the Excel file that meet the requirements to be imported.

Update existing items based on Name, Full Name and SKU.

Update existing items based on Name: This options allows you to update existing items that match the product or service name in your import file regardless of their parent categories. For example, your item list to be imported includes 2 items, Shirt:White and Jacket:Red, the full name of each item is Shirt:White and Jacket:Red respectively, but the names are White and Red respectively. Shirt and Jacket are (parent) categories to which these items belong, so both items will be updated solely based on their name, disregarding their parent categories. Records that do not match any existing items will be created as new items.

Update existing items based on Full Name: This options allows you to update existing items that match the product or service name in your import file regardless of their parent categories. For example, your item list to be imported includes 2 items, Shirt:White and Jacket:White, the full name of each item is formed by the product or service item preceded by its parent category or categories. In this case, even though both articles have the same name, the full name is different, so HandiFox will update each item separately based on its full name. Records that do not match any existing items will be created as new items.

Update existing items based on SKU: HandiFox will separately update all items that match the SKUs defined in the import file. Records that do not match any existing items will be created as new items.

1. Don't update empty values for existing items. For example, your import file includes a product with a name, full name or SKU (depending the selected option as described above) that matches an existing item or SKU in your item list, which does not have a populated purchase description but has a populated sales description. If this option (Don't update empty values for existing items) is checked HandiFox will disregard the purchase description (since its empty/blank) but will update its sales descriptions since its not an empty value.  If this option (Don't update empty values for existing items) is not checked HandiFox will replace all the existing values with values from list in the import file. 
   

Select the desired options and Click Next.

In Step 3, first make sure to map the correct fields, especially the fields marked with  then Click Next. 
 Fields marked with are mandatory.

Step 4 will display a list of item lines, if there is an error in your import file you will see in the Status column. Hover your mouse/cursor over the error to see what needs to be corrected.

Example of an error when importing products and services

 You can also manually specify which items from the import list are to be imported by unchecking this box (picture above) and manually checking the box of each item. Only items with OK status can be checked/unchecked 
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You can now click Import even if there are products and services with errors (only products and services with OK status will be imported), or correct the errors described in step 4, go back to step 1 and reload the import file.

 You can click Download file with not imported items, make the necessary changes to this new file and repeat steps 1-4 as described above afterwards.

 Do not click OK before downloading the previously mentioned file, once the window above closes, the file becomes unrecoverable.