Finally about to make the leap and leave my current job, to follow my own endeavors, and while have done most of the setup work I am getting to the stage where I need to find a more suitable way of doing things, as it will be done on a daily basis.
At the moment I have 7 Different Suppliers, each with a different CSV file to import daily. Their CSV Files all contain the same information:
Product Code
My Buy Price
Product Name
Product Description
Quantity
etc. (those are the most important).
Every day, I currently have to download each feed manually from the suppliers website, rename the column titles so they all go into CS-Cart flawlessly, delete every column except the Stock Levels, Product Code, Price and List Price.
I have to delete the Name Columns, Product Description coliumns and enter them manually on all new products due to CS-Cart overwriting the fields even if they have been manually edited. If I dont delete them, all my hard work in custom writing the descriptions is erased with the generic one the supplier provides in a heart beat.
Now, with 7 different feeds to edit and upload to CS-Cart, this does take a while each morning.
Problem is, There is currently about 30,000 products from all the suppliers feeds listed, with new products being added every day to the feed and old products being removed daily aswell.
The new ones are ok, as they just go in a uncategorized category thats unpublished, allowing me to sort and edit them.
On the other hand, products are being removed from the suppliers feeds daily, and I have no way for CS-Cart to point out that they no longer exist, or being updated by the suppliers feed.
Is there anyway to make this daily job more streamlined that anyone can recommend (paid or unpaid, does not have to be in CS-Cart directly, as long as it works with CS-Cart), but more importantly is there any way that CS-Cart can indicate that a product is no longer updated, or any other way to show its not available from the supplier anymore.
Going through a list manually weekly is not an option due to the 30,000 odd products.
Thanks for your help guys in advance, really appreciate it.
I did have a look through the boards, however was unable to find anything similar to my question that would help, if there is a thread around please point me in its direction.
I can’t help you with a solution in CS-Cart but I have to do this occasionally, although certainly not every day, and I use Excel and vlookup to find out which products are in my current product list and not in the supplier list any more. Conversely, I also use it to see which products are in the supplier list that I don’t have in my product list. It would then be a case of changing the products that are no longer available to “hidden”, which you can also do by importing. I presume you wouldn’t want to actually delete the products that are no longer in your supplier list as you would also be deleting your statistics.
I hope this helps until maybe someone can offer you a more streamlined solution.
[quote name=‘Lyn’]I can’t help you with a solution in CS-Cart but I have to do this occasionally, although certainly not every day, and I use Excel and vlookup to find out which products are in my current product list and not in the supplier list any more. Conversely, I also use it to see which products are in the supplier list that I don’t have in my product list. It would then be a case of changing the products that are no longer available to “hidden”, which you can also do by importing. I presume you wouldn’t want to actually delete the products that are no longer in your supplier list as you would also be deleting your statistics.
I hope this helps until maybe someone can offer you a more streamlined solution.[/QUOTE]
Hello Lyn,
Thanks for your suggestion, I have just looked into it and will definately make my job a fair bit easier.
The place I currently work that am about to leave at has a backend importer that I have not seen anywhere else, that they coded themselves which automatically does everything on every product, including managing margins, updating stock levels, new products additions and removing end of life products.
He is also planning on asking $4000AU min. for it when he makes it public, which I just cant justify.
I’ve played around with a couple of these. Basically, you can identify data from a number of data sources (.xml, access, excell, mysql etc.) and just drill down to specific columns and/or tables.
This data can be from several sources.
You can then manipulate (usually called transform) the data such as join, filter, sort, delete duplicates.
You can then export directly into databases, excel, .xml or as a stand alone CSV file.
This sounds difficult but is all done visually by dragging, dropping and connecting.
HERE’S THE BEST BIT- ONCE YOU HAVE MAPPED THE DATA MOVEMENTS ONCE THEN YOU CAN JUST RUN IT AGAIN AND IT REMEMBERS ALL THE COMMANDS.
IN BAYCASTLE YOU CAN EVEN PRODUCE A SCRIPT WHICH WILL AUTOMATE THE WHOLE IMPORT/CUT/JOIN/EXPORT PROCESS WITH ONE CLICK- COOOL
