Prepare a Product File for Brandwise Transit

This article provides guidance on preparing your product file for upload in Transit. Transit makes it easy for suppliers to share product files with agencies and marketplaces.

Suppliers, this is an easy way to ensure your agencies and marketplaces have the latest product data. Agencies will receive a perfectly formatted product file for import to their system. In addition, the data you upload in Transit directly populates the B2B marketplaces (also known as Reach 2.0)!

To get started, log in to your Brandwise Passport. The Transit menu will display once you've selected your company name in the top-right.

Click the Transit menu at the top to access the upload screen. This screen provides detailed information about using Transit, including a template that offers guidance on preparing your product file for upload. Note the messaging telling you to upload a full product file each time. That means it should contain all available products, not just the ones that are new. I’ll talk more about product status in a moment.

Let’s review the template found on this upload page. You can download it by clicking the orange link indicated in Step 2 above. If you already have a master Excel spreadsheet that contains a listing of your product information, you can start with that and simply verify it meets the guidelines shown in this template! Your product file must be in an Excel (.xls or .xlsx) or Text format (.txt). If you do not have a master spreadsheet, we provide several tabs across the bottom of this template that can be used to build your file from scratch.

The Guidelines tab provides all the required and recommended fields. The required fields are highlighted in green:

Transit currently supports four currency types: USD, AUD, CAD, and GBP. This currency will be reflected on the latest version of the B2B site and will determine which currency is sent to the Agency for them to load into their Play system. If you have multiple currencies, all currencies must be provided in your file. The Template tab provides columns for USD and CAD:

The Price field is used as the price for each individual product. Quantity is the minimum quantity required to add a specific product to an order. Product SKU or product number is a unique identifier for a specific product. Product Name is the name or description of your product. Product Status is the availability state for each individual product. Order Quantity Increment is the quantity a product must follow when added to or removed from an order. Let’s talk about Product Status:

 The accepted values for Product Status are 1, 2, 3 OR Active, Discontinued, Inactive, respectively. A value of 1, or Active, should be used for products that are currently available for sale. A value of 2, or Discontinued, corresponds to products that still have some stock left to ship but are not going to be restocked. A value of 3, or Inactive, should be used to indicate the product is no longer available for sale. If you have a small number of units left in stock, we recommend giving the products a status of 3, or Inactive, to avoid receiving orders that cannot be fulfilled. If a product is inactive and never coming back, then you must first upload the product with a value of 3 or Inactive and then you can remove it from your spreadsheet for future uploads.  

Below is an example of a file with the required fields. In my file, I have column headers that don’t exactly match the template, which is fine! During the upload process, you will “map” your column headers to the Brandwise fields shown in the template. For example, I would map Mult in my file to Order Quantity Increment. For SKU CBP-01, the Min quantity required to add this item to an order is 2. If I want to add more of that product, then I must increase by the Mult (Order Quantity Increment) which is 2. So, I can order 4 of these, 6 of these, etc, but I can’t order 1 or 3, for example.

Now that we’ve covered the required fields, we’ll look at the first set of recommended fields on the Guidelines tab. These are Categories, which are a great way to group your products and make it easier for retailers to find what they’re looking for when shopping online.

Below is an example of the category breakdown in my file and how it displays online for retailers. You can have up to 21 top-level categories. Each top-level category can have three subcategories. Note that a top-level category isn’t required to have any subcategories. In my file, I have two subcategories under one top-level category:

Next, we’ll look at the remaining recommended fields. Some of the most highly requested fields by your agencies are starred below.

Available Date and Quantity On Hand are great references for your reps and retailers and can reduce the number of customer service calls! If you want to use any of the recommended fields, simply add them as columns in your file. For further guidance on various scenarios and how they should be configured, see this article.

Let’s look at my example master spreadsheet. It has a complete list of 9 products with both required and recommended fields. I would use this master spreadsheet to add any new products released throughout the year. Notice that the columns do not need to be in any specific order. All products have a status of 1, meaning they are Active. If a product is going away for good, then I need to give it a value of 3, upload it to Transit, and then it can be removed from my file for future uploads.

The Quantity on Hand column represents my inventory, and the Availability Date column represents when the product is available for sale. You can see I’ve left the Availability Dates blank for products that are currently available. I’ve also included UOM for reference, UPCs for scanning, and Categories for an enhanced shopping experience. Now, we’re ready to upload the file in Transit!

For guidance during the upload process, see our article on uploading products in Transit here.