Importing Products In Bulk

Meanwhile, back at the website...

You should have a good idea of how to write an order on the Handshake mobile app now, so we're going to put the iPad away and go back to the website.

Remember a few steps back in this tutorial when you created the "Magic Beans" product manually by typing its details into the website? Would you like to type in every other product in your catalog by hand? We didn't think so.

Typing in data by hand makes Jack a dull boy

This is where the Bulk Importer comes in. We're going to use it to set up some more products in Excel like the clever modern individuals we are.

1. Launch the Bulk Importer.
2. Find the items row at the top, then hit the Export button on the right-hand side to generate a spreadsheet of your current item list.

1. Once the spreadsheet has downloaded, open it up in Excel. Look familiar? It should. Hopefully this is pretty close to the format of your existing Excel order form and you'll be able to use copy & paste to get your real products into Handshake quick smart.

1. Let's say we sell two primary types of coffee beans ("Magic" and "Regular") and we don't want them to get mixed up. Add a new column to the right of the spreadsheet with the heading category:2 and put Magic in there.

1. Add some more rows underneath the "Magic Beans" product to create some regular beans. It doesn't matter too much what you do as long as you follow the existing format. We created four new products, upped the prices a little (bean inflation is faster that you think) and changed the minimums and multiples to enforce a case-pack of 5 units at a time.

1. Upload your spreadsheet to the website by using the items file chooser, then hitting the Run Import button.

1. Once the import has finished, you'll be able to see the new items in your catalog tree, and if you sync your iPad or iPhone, they'll appear there instantly.

That's it! If you want to learn more about importing your products into Handshake, check out the complete documentation, which also discusses things like:

• Product variants (e.g. color & size)
• Additional price lists
• Importing product images from ZIP files
• ... and much more!