A product upload with option inventory has 2 sections for each product – a single line for the regular product details then a section following it with that product’s options.

NOTE: The actual files used in the samples below were tab delimited text files. However they have been modified to fixed-width files to line up the fields for display with extra blank lines added for clarity due to word-wrapping of the longer lines.

Format Details
We’ll strip the example below down to just the Name, SKU, Product Options, and Option Column Headers fields:

#Name       SKU   Product Options  Option Column Headers 
 
 My Product  1234  !menu1           Color|n|            ## 

- The “Product Options” field is the header telling the system we are importing advanced product options, and all products will have a value of “!menu1″ in that column.
- The “Option Column Headers” field contains the headers for each option column and our example has a value of “Color”. The “|n|” will follow each value in the field.
- The product line will end with “##”. (No header needed for the “##” column.)

Below each product will be it’s option details:

!menu1   menu2   menu3   menu4   use       apptext   sku 
 pricemod weightmod qtyonhand lowstock outofstock image 
 
 Red                              checked            
                                                  none ## 
 
 Blue                             checked            
                                                  none ## 
 !! 

- The header line will start with “!” and the “menu1″, “menu2″, “menu3″, “menu4″ fields are the columns available for product option values. (ex: Size, Color, etc)
- The “use” field will have a value of “checked” if that field is an available option to the customer.
- “image” will have a default value of “none” if that option does not have it’s own image.
- All other fields may be left blank if you are not using them and each option line will end with “##”.
- The line below the options will be a single line containing just “!!”.

In our sample above, we have 1 column of options (“menu1″ for our Color section) with 2 options available: Red, Blue

Example File
The combined data file for this record would look like this:

#Name       SKU   Product Options  Option Column Headers 
 
 My Product  1234  !menu1           Color|n|            ## 
 
 !menu1   menu2   menu3   menu4   use       apptext   sku 
 pricemod weightmod qtyonhand lowstock outofstock image 
 
 Red                              checked            
                                                  none ## 
 
 Blue                             checked            
                                                  none ## 
 !! 

We can also add additional product options and control their values with an upload. For example, if we wanted to add 2 more options and set everything to have a Qty on Hand of 5, with low stock and out of stock limits of 0, our file would be:

#Name       SKU   Product Options  Option Column Headers 
 My Product  1234  !menu1           Color|n|            ## 
 
 !menu1   menu2   menu3   menu4   use       apptext   sku 
 pricemod weightmod qtyonhand lowstock outofstock image 
 
 Red                              checked            
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Blue                             checked            
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Yellow                           checked              
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Green                            checked              
                    5         0                   none ## 
 !! 

When we upload the file above ShopSite will set the inventory values accordingly and will add a Yellow and Green option to our list.

Multiple Option Columns

If your product had both a Color and Size option, then you would have both the “menu1″ and “menu2″ field filled in with values, along with an extra value in the Option Column Headers field. It would look like this:

#Name       SKU   Product Options  Option Column Headers 
 
 My Product  1234  !menu1           Color|n|Size|n|     ## 
 
 !menu1   menu2   menu3   menu4   use       apptext   sku 
 pricemod weightmod qtyonhand lowstock outofstock image 
 
 Red      Small                   checked            
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Red      Large                   checked            
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Blue     Small                   checked            
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Blue     Large                   checked            
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Yellow   Small                   checked              
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Yellow   Large                   checked              
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Green    Small                   checked              
                    5         0                   none ## 
 
 Green    Large                   checked              
                    5         0                   none ## 
 !! 

Option Detail Fields:
Since this feature is so new ShopSite’s database fields list does not yet include the details for these new fields, but we’ll summarize them here:

menu1: First option (ex: size)
menu2: Second option (ex: color)
menu3: Third option
menu4: Frouth option
use: “checked” or blank determines if this option is available to the customer
apptext: The value in this field is appended to the option name when displayed to the customer
sku: A SKU specific for this option
pricemod: Used to adjust the product price when this option is selected. (ex: +2.00)
weightmod: Used to adjust the product weight when this option is selected. (:ex +1.00)
qtyonhand: Quantity currently in stock
lowstock: The low stock value for warning messages to the store owner
outofstock: When the stock reaches this value (if inventory tracking is on) it can no longer be ordered
image: The path and filename of this option’s image if it has one, or “none” if it does not have one.

Additional References:

Database Upload – Specify Upload File

http://www.shopsite.com/help/10.2/en-US/sc/pro/database.upload.file.html

Database Upload/Download Fields

http://www.shopsite.com/help/10.2/en-US/sc/pro/upload.fields.html