Overview

Amazon provides sellers with a powerful bulk listing tool through inventory file templates. These downloadable spreadsheets allow you to add new products or update existing listings in large quantities, saving significant time compared to editing items one by one. Understanding how to create and customize these templates is essential for sellers managing catalogs with many SKUs.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Bulk listing management - Inventory file templates are spreadsheets containing multiple data columns that let you describe products using various attributes and information fields, enabling efficient catalog management at scale.
• Customizable templates - You can build a template tailored to your specific needs, covering different product types across multiple categories within a single file.
• Built-in data validation - Templates automatically include the correct product identifiers and required fields, eliminating the need to manually look up valid values from separate reference documents.
• Legacy templates deprecated - Amazon has transitioned away from older category-specific and flat file templates. Sellers who previously used those formats must switch to the current template system to avoid upload errors.
• Multi-store support - When creating a template, you can select which specific Amazon stores you intend to list in and deselect the rest.

How to Create Your Template

To get started, navigate to the inventory file template section within Seller Central by going to the option to create a blank template. You will first choose a card that best describes your intended use case, such as listing new products, updating price and quantity, or modifying product details. If you are adding products that do not yet exist in Amazon's catalog, there is a dedicated workflow for items not currently listed. Once you select your use case, you will need to identify the type of product you want to sell using one of two methods: a keyword search tool or a category browsing tool.

Finding Your Product Type

The keyword search tool lets you enter descriptive terms or your product title into a search box to locate the right product classification. Using detailed, specific descriptions will produce more streamlined results. The system will preselect suggested product type keywords based on your input, and you can edit this list before or after making your selection. If the search does not surface the right match, you can switch to the browse method and manually navigate through Amazon's category hierarchy. Select the appropriate top-level category, then continue narrowing down until the correct classification appears. You can repeat this process to classify all of your different product types before generating a single consolidated template.