Once you've enabled inventory management for your store, it's time to add actual inventory data to your catalog. You add inventory on the Inventory page, as shown in Figure 1.

• The "Inventory" link doesn't appear in Store Manager until you have enabled the inventory management system. Once you are in Catalog Manager, clicking the Inventory tab will also take you to the Inventory page.
• Any changes you make to inventory quantity data on the Inventory page go live as soon as you click "Save", in other words, you don't have to publish your Catalog Manager.

To add inventory quantity data:

1. From the Store Manager, click the "Inventory" link in the Process column.
2. Click "Edit". This takes you to the Edit Inventory page, where you can type the quantities for each product. You can display up to 100 items at a time by changing the "Items Per Page" drop-down menu.
3. Enter the quantity of each item.
4. When you're finished typing in the data, click "Save". This takes you back to the Inventory page, where you can confirm the current inventory level for each item.

Upload Inventory Data

If you want to save time on inventory updates, you can use a CSV (comma separated value) data file to upload new inventory levels for some or all of your products. The best way to create your first inventory CSV file is to download the current version of your file from the inventory management system.

To download your current Inventory data file:

1. From the Inventory page, click "Download". This takes you to the Download Inventory page.
2. Set the drop-down menu to its default value of "All Tables", then click "Download". Depending on your web browser configuration, either the file will open automatically in a spreadsheet application or you will be prompted to save or open the file.
3. Save the file in CSV format.

• Code - The item Code
• Quantity - Current inventory level

Note: If you are building your Merchant Solutions site in Store Editor, when you download the inventory CSV file, it contains rows for all your section pages as well as your product pages. It's necessary to delete these section page rows from the inventory file before you upload new inventory data. If you forget to delete the section page rows in the file, your product records display correctly, but the section page records produce an error message after you upload the file, as shown in Figure 2 below.

To upload your updated Inventory data file:

1. Return to the Inventory page and click "Upload". This takes you to the Upload Inventory page.
2. Click "Browse…" to locate the inventory data file on your computer, select the file, and click [Open\ to place the file address in the Choose File text window.
3. Click "Upload". This takes you to the Upload Summary page, as shown in Figure 2.
4. If you don't see an error message on the page, or if you know that the error messages are attributable to section page records in the file, click "Save". This returns you to the Inventory page, where you'll see the newly uploaded inventory levels.

See Also

• Using the Real-time Inventory Feature
• Using the Database Inventory Feature

Note: For merchants that edit their inventory using Excel and whose item codes contain leading zeros (for example 00012345), Excel may trim leading zeroes from your CSV file upon opening the file. Your inventory coes would then be incorrect upon uploading. You can avoid this issue with Excel by following the instructions listed below.

To edit your inventory data if your item codes contain preceding zeroes

1. From the Inventory page, click "Download". This takes you to the Download Inventory page.
2. Set the drop-down menu to its default value of "All Tables", then click "Download". Depending on your web browser configuration, either the file will open automatically in a spreadsheet application or you will be prompted to save or open the file.
3. Save the file in CSV format.
4. Rename the file to remove the extension (remove .csv, you must have your desktop/folder options set to display file extensions). You will be prompted with the warning that changing the extension will make the file unusable. Proceed.
5. Open Microsoft Excel.
6. Open your inventory file. File > Open > Type All Files > open the inventory file. You will be prompted with the Text Import Wizard.
7. Step 1 - click Next.
8. Step 2 - select Comma as the only delimiter. Click Next.
9. Step 3 - change column data format to TEXT. Click Finish.

Once the inventory file is open in your spreadsheet application, you can add inventory levels to each product. The file consists of two columns:

• Code - The item Code
• Quantity - Current inventory level