Importing and Exporting Variant Products in Tagrain
To be able to Import and Export Variant products in Tagrain, you must subscribe to and activate the Variant and Composite Products Management plugin.
Introduction
Variant products are those products that have an attribute, or a set of attributes bound to them. Some examples of attributes would be colour, size, style, weave, etc. All Variant Products will have a parent product and the combination of attributes bound to them. It is this combination of attributes that creates a set of child products.
It is always a Child product that is sold on the Web Register and not the Parent product. For example, Polo T Shirt / Large / Blue is a product that has 2 attributes – Size and Colour. These 2 attributes have their values. Possible values of Size attribute could be Small, Medium, Large. Similarly, the Colour attribute could be Red, Blue, Green, etc. A combination of colour and size determines the different variants of the Polo T Shirt.
Variant products, also known as "Matrix items". The main product, Polo T Shirt in this case, is called a Parent Product. Products created using the unique combinations of colour and sizes will be called Child Products.
Steps to Import Variant Products in Tagrain
The steps to import Variant Products are explained below:
Step 1. Download the Excel Template.
Click the Export symbol to download the product.xls file. The file by default will get downloaded to your “Downloads” folder. In case you want to save the file to a different location on your drive, you may click the “Save As” button and then navigate to your desired location on the drive and save the product.xls file.
The Excel template that you just downloaded from the Product List view screen is common for all the product types.
In this article we are going to use the demo data in the template as a reference to create new variant products.
We will consider a product Tencel Stretch Jeans which comes in 3 colours: Harvest Gold, Crew Grey, Olive Night AND in 3 sizes: 36, 38, 40
Three colours and three sizes will result in nine different variants of the product - Tencel Stretch Jeans.
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Harvest Gold / 36
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Harvest Gold / 38
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Harvest Gold / 40
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Crew Grey / 36
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Crew Grey / 38
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Crew Grey / 40
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Olive Night / 36
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Olive Night / 38
Tencel Stretch Jeans / Olive Night / 40
The Excel template downloaded from the Product List View is common for all types of products. To create Variant Products, mark the main product (the parent product) by specifying its Product Type = 5 in the template.
The template will allow you to specify the different attributes (Size and Colour in this case) of this main / parent product. The attribute values are specified as comma-separated values in the Attribute value columns.
At present, Tagrain allows you to define as many as 5 attributes with each attribute having 5 unique values.
After populating the main / parent product for its price, applicable tax, UPC Code (barcode) etc. you will now start populating the ‘child’ products in the excel template.
Important considerations while defining the ‘child’ products
Please ensure that the code should be unique for every child product.
Unless otherwise specified, the application will use the price defined for the ‘parent’ as the price for the ‘child’ products.
For every ‘child’ product, it is mandatory to specify the ‘parent’ code of the ‘child’
It is a good practice to give a proper product description to the ‘child’ product.
The Product Type of the ‘child’ product need not be equal to 5. This is because a ‘child’ product is a normal product. It is the parent product that needs to be specifically categorised with Product Type = 5
At the time of exporting the products, you were presented with an option to include Stock Information as part of the download.
This stock information is to be entered in the Inventory Item worksheet of the Excel spreadsheet in which you have entered the product information.
The stock information includes Opening Stock Quantity, Re-Order Level and Maximum Stock level. This information is supposed to be entered for every item across all the stores.
Once you have filled in the required information, you may click the Import symbol to import product data. Navigate to the location where you have saved the product.xls file. Select the product.xls file and click OK to start the import. The application will indicate in the bottom right corner of the screen when the data upload starts. Upon completion, a notification pop up would appear in the notification center to notify if the import was successful.
Once the upload template is properly filled, click the import button on the Product Master Screen. Navigate to the location where your Product.xls file is saved. Select the file and click OK.
The application will indicate when the data upload starts in the notification centre. Once the data is uploaded, the application will again notify for the successful data import.
In case the import is not successful, the application will again notify for the unsuccessful import.
The notification centre will mention that there has been an error in the upload.
Click on the notification error to download the uploaded file. The downloaded file will clearly specify the error(s) at the end of every row in the excel sheet.
Steps to Export Variant Products in Tagrain
The steps to export Product Data using the excel template are listed below:
Click on the “Export” symbol on the Product Master Screen. It will give you the option to include Stock Information as part of the download.
This will download the entire Product Master Data into an Excel sheet. This downloaded data can be utilized for further analysis.
Suggested Readings
Importing and Exporting Serial Products in Tagrain
Importing and Exporting Batch Controlled Products in Tagrain
Importing and Exporting Composite Products in Tagrain
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