Product Catalog Upload

Introduction

The Product Catalog Upload feature allows Reason Automation (RA) clients to customize and upload their own product-level attributes to a table in their RA database. These attributes can then be used in SQL queries or incorporated into dashboards and reports, allowing clients to see their data in groupings that make sense for their particular business needs rather than relying on limited out-of-box Amazon product categorizations.

Use Cases

1. Custom Categories

A client groups their products in categories that do not match Amazon groupings, and wishes to see all reporting (sales, traffic, inventory, ads) grouped by those custom categories. This client can populate the product catalog upload sheet with custom category and subcategory data by ASIN, and then join to the resulting table to bring those custom categories into any query or dashboard.

2. Custom Attributes

As with category, the product catalog upload feature allows for the addition of up to 11 custom attributes per product. Dedicate each column to a particular custom attribute.

3. Custom Titles

Amazon titles can be a mess - they change frequently, get polluted with data from other sellers, and are often far longer than needed for reporting needs. RA clients can bring consistency to their product reporting by adding a cleaner title to the catalog upload file and using that title across all reports.

How to Use

1. Open RA client portal. Go to Manage your data > File uploads in the Reason Automation portal (app.reasonautomation.com) and download the example template using the link shown below (if you don’t see the File Uploads option, please contact us to get it activated).

2. Edit your product catalog information (use Excel or Google Sheets).

In the example below, we’ve added ASINs and SKUs, along with a custom product_title, part_number, category and subcategory, and we have used the first of 11 customizable categories to track information about promotional activity. Note that while partner_name is present in the download file, it is not required in the upload file. You can leave it as-is, and will get a message on upload stating that column has been ignored.

Note these upload file requirements:

• Use the same ASIN and SKU formatting as Amazon
• Each row must contain a unique {ASIN+SKU} combination. You can have multiple SKUs map to the same ASIN, or vice versa*, but a given {ASIN+SKU} combination can appear only once.

*Special Use Cases

When using this feature with the following analytics products, each row in the upload file should contain a unique SKU (a given SKU should appear only once in the upload file). Explanations differ slightly by product. Seller Profit Toolkit - This product uses transactions data which is at the SKU level, and mapping SKUs to multiple ASINs or having multiple sets of attributes (table rows in upload file) for a single SKU would create ambiguity.

Seller Core Dashboard - Amazon does not provide reliable traffic data at the SKU level - only ASIN, and so this dashboard is built on ASIN relationships. Mapping SKUs to multiple ASINs or having multiple sets of attributes for a single SKU would create ambiguity.

Vendor Core Dashboard - reasoning here is the same as for Seller Core, although this is usually not an issue as vendors typically maintain a 1:1 relationship between ASIN and SKU.

3. Save the completed file and upload. When saving, make sure to save as CSV (and not XLSX). Use the upload button shown below (or drag your file) to upload. Our system will confirm when the file has been uploaded successfully.

4. Check your RA database for the new table. A new table called ‘product_catalog_upload’ should appear both in a new schema called ‘custom’, as well as in your ‘public’ schema. You will only be able to query the ‘public’ version. Check for it and query it to make sure the data is correct (if you don’t see it after a few minutes, check your file for any obvious errors and try a second upload. If you continue to have issues, please reach out to us at help@reasonautomation.com).

5. Use your new table in a query

Here’s an example query a Seller Central seller could use to pull page_views (traffic) and ordered_product_sales by ASIN, substituting a new custom product title and bringing in a custom category. Note that we are using the max() of category and product_title here - in the event that a single ASIN appears in multiple rows in the catalog table (as would happen with multiple SKUs mapped to the same ASIN), taking the max of these catalog table values will prevent join errors.

select 

	date_trunc('month', date) as date
	, stci.child_asin as child_asin
	, max(pcu.product_title) as product_title
	, max(pcu.category) as category
	, sum(page_views) as page_views
	, sum(ordered_product_sales) as ops 

FROM 

	public.sales_and_traffic_detail_sales_traffic_by_child_item stci
	
	left join product_catalog_upload pcu	
	on stci.child_asin = pcu.asin
	
	group by 1, 2

And here’s our result: