Creating New Master Products when Importing a Vendor Catalog

Previous Topic: Mapping Fields

Using the Data Import Wizard to import Inventory is designed to import Vendor Catalog entries, not Master Products. However, if the vendor catalog items are being imported for the first time, you can, if you like, automatically create Master Products from the imported vendor catalog items. (See the Master Products vs. Vendor Catalogs section for details on the difference between the two.)

As an example, let’s assume you use parts from two separate vendors (Inventory) A vendor is a company that provides you with the inventory you sell to or use to service your customers. – Aire-Eez Supply and Sonic Enterprise. Each vendor provides you with a .CSV Short for Comma-delimited text file. file containing the following fields for each inventory item:

• MNFPartNo. The manufacturer’s part number.

• PartNo. The vendor’s part number.

• Desc. The vendor’s description.

• Price. The vendor’s price.

• Retail – the vendor’s recommended retail price.

Since both vendors each provide you with the same interchangeable part, you should configure ServiceCEO so that you have a single Master Product for each part. The Manufacturer’s Part Number field is designed to link the data provided by each vendor to the Master Product.

The end result of this configuration will be:

• A single Master Product item using the manufacturer's part number.

• Two different Vendors Catalog entries - one for Aire-Eez and one for Sonic Enterprise - each with their own unique part numbers and descriptions:

To continue our example, let's import the two vendors' catalogs. When you import Aire-Eez Supply's catalog, because this is the first time you are importing their catalog, every entry from their data file creates a new Vendor Catalog entry. In addition, if the imported item does not correspond to any corresponding Master Product entry in ServiceCEO (depending on the fields you map in the Import Wizard's Mapping Fields step), then a new Master Product will be created. New Master Product entries are created when all of the following conditions are met:

• A Master Product part number is available. The number is available either because it is explicitly mapped (see the Mapping Fields section) or it is manually entered during the preview phase.

• A Master Category is specified for the new Master Product. This field can not currently be mapped. Its value must be specified during the preview step. See the Preview Import section for details. If no Master Category is specified the new Master Product will not be created.  

• A new catalog item is being created. Master Product entries are not created or modified when the import utility is used to update existing catalog entries.

If a new Master Product is created, then the final six fields in the Mapping Fields step will be used:

The last six fields shown here are ONLY used when new Master Product entries are being created.  

Once Aire-Eez Supply’s data has been imported, Sonic Enterprise’s data can be imported using the exact same field mappings. Because this is the first import for Sonic Enterprise, each item in their data file will create a new Vendor Catalog entry. However, the mapping to ServiceCEO’s Part No field will behave slightly differently than it did for Aire-Eez Supply.  Recall that Aire-Eez Supply and Sonic Enterprise offer some of the same Manufacturer’s Part Numbers.  For each new Vendor Catalog entry, if an existing Master Product is found with a matching part number then the vendor catalog entry will be linked to the existing Master Product, and the remaining five fields will be ignored. If an existing Master Product match is not found, then the system will create a new Master Product, following the rules above.

Next Topic: Preview Import

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