Recent Walmart Updates To Product Quantity Changes Via the Walmart API
UPDATE 4/28
Walmart has made another update to their API regarding SKU Numbers. Our tech team is actively working to make any changes needed on our end to ensure we can continue to communciate successfully.
SKU Number is now defined by Walmart as such:
An arbitrary alphanumeric unique ID, specified by the seller, which identifies each item. This will be used by the seller in the XSD file to refer to each item. Special characters in the sku needing encoding are: ':', '/', '?', '#', '[', ']', '@', '!', '$', '&', "'", '(', ')', '*', '+', ',', ';', '=', as well as '%' itself. Other characters don't need to be encoded.
Source: https://developer.walmart.com/#/apicenter/marketPlace/latest#deleteExcep
Issue Overview
The ecomdash team started to notice in early March that inventory syncs being submitted to Walmart for SKU’s that have hyphens, periods, or spaces in them may be rejected by Walmart, preventing ecomdash from being able to keep your quantities in sync. Additionally, we had noticed a few windows where all updates to Walmart were failing to update for periodic windows.
As you may have been impacted for one or both of these issues, we wanted to provide you an update.
After confirming with the Walmart API documentation, we noticed that Walmart now defines SKU Numbers as such;
An arbitrary alphanumeric unique ID, specified by the seller, identifying each item. This is used by the seller in the XSD file to refer to each item. Special characters hyphen (-), space ( ), and period (.) are not allowed.
Source: https://developer.walmart.com/#/apicenter/marketPlace/latest#getAllItems
We understand that despite this, it appears Walmart is still accepting new listings from ecomdash with these special characters as well as allowing them to be used when creating listings in Walmart directly which can lead to confusion and issues with third party software updating those items.
We have reached out to Walmart support for more information as to why this change was put in place. In the meantime, we understand how important accurate inventory is and have found that updating the SKU’s in Walmart and the Walmart Reference ID’s in ecomdash to not have any special characters can help resolve this issue.
Note: If you have Walmart integrated with Shipstation or Deliverr, you will also need to update SKU’s in those systems as well to ensure they can continue to function successfully.
We understand that depending on the number of listings you have on Walmart, this may be a large project so we have provided full instructions below on how to update the ecomdash side of things in the fewest steps possible. If you have any questions or need assistance with any of the workflows provided below, please reach out to support@ecomdash.com and we will be happy to help!
NOTE: SKU's must be updated within Walmart directly as well. The steps below are for updating Reference ID in ecomdash which is required, but does not also change the SKU's in Walmart.
Updating Walmart Reference ID’s Individually
- Navigate to Products > All Products
- Click Actions > View next to the product you want to edit
- Click the Manage Listings button
- Click into the Channel Settings section
- Click the Walmart Reference ID field to edit it so that it has no hyphens (-), spaces ( ), or periods (.).
Updating Walmart Reference ID’s in Bulk
Step 1: Create an export format in ecomdash.
- Navigate to Settings> Manual Export Formats and select Add New> Enter “Walmart Reference ID Update” as the name> Add New.
- Select Walmart from the Storefronts dropdown.
- Select Add Attributes > add SKU Number and Reference ID.
- Select Back and Save.
Step 2: Create an import format in ecomdash.
- Navigate to Settings> Manual Export Formats.
- Mark the checkbox the export format you created and select Copy Format> Create Import> Copy Format at the top of the page.
Step 3: Export your Reference IDs from ecomdash.
- Navigate to the magnifying glass icon at the top right of your ecomdash account and select Inventory Search.
- Set filter to Is Listed On and Walmart.
- Click Bulk Actions> Export All Search Results.
- Choose the Walmart Reference ID Update format and click Export - select the export format you created.
Step 4: Update the file to match the updated SKUs in Walmart and upload the file into ecomdash to update the Reference IDs.
- Once the export is complete, open the file and update Column B to reflect the updated SKUs in Walmart. We recommend using the Control + F feature in Excel or Sheets to find and replace the special character with nothing, to get rid of them. NOTE: DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING IN COLUMN A.
- Once your file is updated, navigate to the lightning bolt icon and select Upload Inventory.
- Follow the steps provided making sure to select the file you just saved for Step 1, choose the Reference ID Update format for Step 2, set Step 4 to Overwrite, uncheck Step 5, and select Upload.
- Once the upload is complete, you will also need to update th we recommend performing a Sync Now for all products. This can be done by selecting 250 items in All Products then clicking Bulk Actions> Sync Now, to ensure any SKUs that received an error are now getting updated.
Step 5:
- Update the SKU's in Walmart to match
Periodic windows of Walmart's API unavailability
We had a number of reports about missing orders or failed product updates starting in mid March which has continued periodically until recently. We have reached out to Walmart Tech support who are aware of the issue and working to resolve this on their side.
In the interim, if you have concerns we would recommend using the ecomdash sync alerts to be notified if an update failed to occur so that you can resync as needed.
To Turn on Sync Failure Alerts
- Navigate to Settings > Alert Settings
- In the Inventory Alerts section, turn on the third alert title Sync Failue Alerts
Conclusion
As an integrator of many marketplaces and shopping carts we know you rely on us to help you navigate the waters when one of our partners is experiencing issues or making changes. We hope this information is helpful to you and again if you have any questions, please reach out to support@ecomdash.com directly and we are happy to help.
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