Create Products

Our WooCommerce CMS Excel add-in lets you create simple and variable products and product variations.

Simple products are simple in creation too. Variable products and their variations have some caveats you need to pay attention to. However, if you are not a new store owner, you already know that.

We tried to simplify the product creation as much as possible. If you ever tried to import and create variable products and their variations the standard way, it will seem like you are rediscovering WooCommerce. We also offer a simple way to create product SKUs and also remove the need to manually add a main product picture later. If you are happy with the way we propose SKU creation and image naming you will already remove a lot of overhead from the product creation process.

Simple Products #

Required fields:

• SKU
• Name
• Category
• Price
• Stock

Optional fields:

• Description
• Attributes and their terms

SKU #

Enter your preferred SKU. You can use any combination of letters and numbers, as well as dashes.

Name #

Enter the product name. WordPress and WooCommerce don’t require the name to be unique. However, keep in mind that two products with the same name will have different slugs, an attribute that is meant to be unique. Also, two products with the same name will confuse your customers, but it’s up to you to decide. We don’t check for uniqueness either.

Category #

If you click on the category cell and provided that the categories sheet is updated, a dropdown with all your categories lets you simply choose the appropriate one. Of course, you can also paste or manually input it into the cell.

Keep in mind though that if the category is not already present on your store, you need first to manually create it in the admin environment and then fetch categories to update the workbook and be able to use it.

Price #

Enter your preferred price. You should only input positive numbers with or without decimals and 0 (zero).

Stock #

The stock (quantity) cell is in essence both required and optional. This might seem like a controversy but it’s not.

If you leave it blank, an in-stock product will be created. Customers will be able to purchase as many such products as they want because you are basically telling them, we have an unlimited amount of this product’s units.

If you enter a 0 (zero), an out-of-stock product will be created. Depending on how you set up your store and whether you have made any custom modifications, out-of-stock products may or may not show up in search results, product loops, and individual product pages.

Bottom line is, whether you leave this cell blank, input 0 (zero), or any other positive number, a product will be created.

Description (optional) #

This field is optional. You can enter as much information as you want but keep in mind that this information will be output raw on the product page. No formatting other than a paragraph for the whole text.

Attributes and Terms (optional) #

Simple products can also have attributes and terms. These are informative and optional.

Choose an attribute from the in-cell dropdown and then chose an appropriate term. You can also manually enter attributes and terms, as well as paste them from another source. However, if an attribute is not already present on your website you need to first manually create it in the admin environment and then fetch attributes and terms to be able to use it.

Attribute terms on the other hand are created during the product creation process, if not already present. All we need is the attribute to be available.

 

When you have finished entering data for all simple products you wish to create, just click on the Simple Products button in the Create Products area of the add-in. If all is well and no errors are found, the process will start. When the process finishes, for each product created, the simple product ID will be output in the first column which will also be painted green.

Variable Products #

Required fields:

• SKU
• Name
• Category
• At least one Variation Attribute

Optional fields:

• Description
• More Variation Attributes
• Non-Variation Attributes

SKU #

Enter your preferred SKU. You can use any combination of letters and numbers, as well as dashes.

Name #

Enter the product name. WordPress and WooCommerce don’t require the name to be unique. However, keep in mind that two products with the same name will have different slugs, an attribute that is meant to be unique. Also, two products with the same name will confuse your customers, but it’s up to you to decide. We don’t check for uniqueness either.

Category #

If you click on the category cell and provided that the categories sheet is updated, a dropdown with all your categories lets you simply choose the appropriate one. Of course, you can also paste or manually input it into the cell.

Keep in mind though that if the category is not already present on your store, you need first to manually create it in the admin environment and then fetch categories to update the workbook and be able to use it.

Attributes #

At least one Variation Attribute is required, and no term is needed at this point. These are the so-called attributes for variations. These attributes are the ones used to distinguish between product variations. The customer chooses them in order to pick their preferred variation.

Generally, regarding attributes and terms, be they attribute for variations or not, you only chose the appropriate attributes and no terms. If you have manually created variations in your store before, this may be a surprise. Because you know that in order to create product variations, you need to first input the terms you are going to use in the appropriate attributes tab, and then chose them in the variations tab. By using our WooCommerce CMS Excel add-in, you don’t need to worry about which terms you are going to use in advance. We take care of it during the product variation creation process. You just input the term you want to use when the time comes.

Description (optional) #

This field is optional. You can enter as much information as you want but keep in mind that this information will be output raw on the product page. No formatting other than a paragraph for the whole text.

More Variation Attributes (optional) #

Enter more variation attributes if you need to.

Non-Variation Attributes (optional) #

These are the so-called attributes not used for variations. These attributes are shared among all variations, the customer has no interaction with them and they are not needed to distinguish variations. For example, if you have a variable product, a T-Shirt, which comes in 3 sizes and is made of cotton, the material is the non-variation attribute while the rest are the variation attributes.

 

When you have finished entering data for all variable products you wish to create, just click on the Variable Products button in the Create Products area of the add-in. If all is well and no errors are found, the process will start. When the process finishes, for each product created, the variable product ID will be output in the first column which will also be painted green.

Product Variations #

Required fields:

• Variation SKU
• Price
• Stock
• Attribute Term(s)

Optional field:

• Description

Variation SKU #

The add-in will propose an SKU by querying each variable product, counting the number of variations present, and adding an integer at the end. This approach is not error-proof and it may not comply with your current SKU scheme. Regardless, it is a simple way to create variation SKUs and not have to manually type them in. If you don’t like it, you can always edit the cell and add your preferred SKU. And don’t worry about SKU errors, if something is wrong, we will let you know.

Price #

Enter your preferred price. You should only input positive numbers with or without decimals and 0 (zero).

Stock #

The stock (quantity) cell is in essence both required and optional. This might seem like a controversy but it’s not.

If you leave it blank, an in-stock product will be created. Customers will be able to purchase as many such products as they want because you are basically telling them, we have an unlimited amount of this product’s units.

If you enter a 0 (zero), an out-of-stock product will be created. Depending on how you set up your store and whether you have made any custom modifications, out-of-stock products may or may not show up in search results, product loops, and individual product pages.

Bottom line is, whether you leave this cell blank, input 0 (zero), or any other positive number, a product will be created.

Attribute Term(s) #

For each Attribute fetched, you need to choose an appropriate term. You can choose one from the dropdown, type it in, paste it from another source and even add a new one. If it’s a new one, we will add it to the global variation terms.

Description (optional) #

This field is optional. You can enter as much information as you want but keep in mind that this information will be output raw on the product page. No formatting other than a paragraph for the whole text.

 

Creating product variations is a two-step process.

1. Every variation has a variable parent product. You can find the variable ID in the Products sheet. In the first column, enter as many variable product IDs as the number of product variations you wish to create, each on its own row. After you finish entering all IDs, click on Check Product IDs. This action will first query your website to check if the entered IDs are correct. If any wrong ID is found you will be prompted to either correct or remove it and click on Check Product IDs again. If everything is correct, this same action will fetch all the necessary information to create variations. Heads up, if you have already entered data and you click on Check Product IDs, everything but the Variable IDs will be wiped.
2. After you have entered all required and optional data, click on the Product Variations button in the Create Products area of the add-in. If all is well and no errors are found, the process will start. When the process finishes, for each product created, the variable product ID cell in the first column will be painted green.

Product Images #

So far we have briefly scratched the surface regarding product images, in the first paragraph of this page.

We have a simple solution to propose, for you to not worry about manually entering product images after product creation. This way you can truly create products 100% from within the Excel workbook.

Our solution #

What we do is that after you input all data and click on the appropriate button to create products, we first query your website to see if any image, which is named after the SKU you have entered, is present. If we find a match, we use it as the main picture of your product listing. If we don’t find one, we continue creating the product using the standard WooCommerce image placeholder which indicates that no image is present. Let’s explain that with an example.

An example of working with images #

Let’s say you are creating a simple product and you enter an SKU of simple-product-1. And let’s say that you have a product image on your computer drive which is called myImage.jpeg. You rename the image from myImage.jpeg to simple-product-1.jpeg (file extension is not taken into account) and upload it to your media folder on your website. When you click the Simple Product button to create the product, we will query the media folder on your website, and find a match there (SKU entered matches the image title, without the extension). We will then proceed to create this simple product and use this image. 100% product creation from within an Excel workbook, only thanks to our WooCommerce CMS Excel add-in. Simple as that. The above works for simple and variable products, as well as product variations if you need different images per variation.