The XLS Data Import tool allows you to import products into ChannelUnity via an Excel spreadsheet.

This is useful if you don’t have a shopping cart platform connected to your ChannelUnity account at the present time, however using a shopping cart to power ChannelUnity is still our recommended method.

To protect customers from accidentally overwriting their existing Cart data, this tool is not enabled by default.  For access to this tool please contact ChannelUnity support by emailing us at support@channelunity.com.

How to import a file

To access the XLS Data Import tool, click the Setup menu, and on the left side menu, click on “XLS Data Import”.
Please upload your data file. This should be in Excel (XLS or XLSX) format. To do this, click on the Choose File button.
Select your file, then when complete, click on Upload Now.
A message will display to indicate the current progress of the import.

File format

For successful imports, please ensure that your file corresponds to the following layout.
The first row in the file is for field names. At a minimum you need the following field names:

SKU
Price
Title
Description
Qty
Image

Each subsequent row represents a product. If you have a variation product that for example varies by colour, and there are three colours, you will need four rows in total.
One to represent the “parent” product and one each for each of the colours, you can check that your products imported successfully by viewing them on the Listings page.

In order to indicate that the product is a “parent” product, please make sure the XLS file contains and has data in the following columns:

• Variations – comma separated list of the name of the fields that the product varies by
• RelatedSKUs – comma separated list of the variation SKUs

If you wish to update products at a later date, you can make changes in the same Excel file, and upload this again.
Please note: The SKU column is the unique identifier, so if the same SKU already exists in ChannelUnity, the product will be updated rather than a new product created.

Example XLS File: cu_xls_import_example

Limitations: we recommend keeping the number of fields to 150 or below