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Map4 WooCommerce Integration

Question

A while ago I got in touch about integrating our in-house stock system with our E-Commerce website.

We are now nearing completion on the site design, and we're just needing the capability of importing a stock csv file that's exported from our system back up into our WooCommerce site.

To give you a quick overview, we use a program called Map4 Premier that is written by a company called DataFile. This program manages all our stock, orders, customers, deliveries etc.

We have our orders exporting from the test website as a .csv file no problem, and can import this data into our Map4 Premier system.

Quick process overview so far:

  1. When a new order is placed on the website, a csv file is exported from WooCommerce every 15 minutes via FTP to a folder on the FTP server.
  2. Map4 Premier waits for this file, then pulls the data on the CSV into the system.
  3. The order is processed through the Map4 Premier system, and then an updated stock csv file containing the stock quantity changes is then created by Map4 Premier. I believe that this csv file is then placed in a folder on our FTP server (I'm waiting for confirmation on this from our Map4 Premier supplier).

We now need a way to pull this new stock csv file into our website and update all of the product variations. I've attached a copy of the stock file that is exported from our system for you to have a look at (it contains the stock code / WooCommerce SKU and the stock Quantity). We are wanting to update product information from our Map4 Premier stock system for the following processes:

  1. When an order is placed online (update stock).
  2. Possibly in the future, when there is a change to product prices in our in-house stock system (update all products where there is a price change).

At the moment, we want to keep the product stock levels in sync with our Map4 Premier system.

Ideally, we want to use Map4 Premier as the main control source of data to update the website's stock quantities when there are changes made in our stock system.

Please could you let me know if and how your Modern Retail Integrator works with this plan? I am wondering if we only need your Inventory CSV/XML Uploader?

Hope to hear from you soon.  Kind regards.  Sarah

 

Answer

Are you sure you sent the right file?  The CSV file you sent only has 2 columns of data.

Instead, I was expecting a report that had similar columns of data as listed in this article:

For example, here are some of the columns we typically see in an inventory or product report:

  1. Product Name (Required)
  2. Price (Mandatory)
  3. Sale Price
  4. Description
  5. Style Name or Number
  6. UPC
  7. Unique Identifier (Required)
  8. Quantity on Hand (Mandatory)
  9. Size
  10. Color
  11. Department
  12. Brand or Vendor
  13. Other Attributes

If you can get us a more robust Product Export, we’ll certainly be able to help you get your Map4 system integrated with WooCommerce.  Also, if you or your developers can copy this report to our FTP server on a scheduled basis, we can completely automate this entire process for you.

Let me know.  Thanks.