Ecommerce agency feed manager

Agency product feeds from client catalogs to XML and CSV

Collect each client catalog in its own folder, convert it with a per client template that maps columns to your feed fields, cleans prices, URLs and availability, then write XML and CSV feeds and deliver them on a schedule to the location each channel reads.

An agency managing shopping and marketplace channels receives product catalogs from many clients, mostly as Excel files maintained by hand. Column names, price formats and availability values differ from client to client, and the channels expect feeds with exact field names in XML or CSV.

Rebuilding feeds manually each time a client updates prices or stock is slow, and mistakes such as a missing currency, a broken image URL or availability written as Yes instead of in_stock cause products to be disapproved.

The workflow

1. 1Collect catalogsEach client uploads its catalog to a dedicated Dropbox or Google Drive folder, or the agency drops a batch of files into one folder.
2. 2Map to feed fieldsA template per client maps catalog columns to feed fields such as id, title, price, availability, link and image_link.
3. 3Clean valuesPrices get a currency code, availability values are normalized to the allowed set, whitespace and line breaks are removed from titles and duplicate product IDs are removed.
4. 4Write feedsThe same cleaned table is written as an XML feed with your element names and as a CSV or TSV feed for channels that accept it.
5. 5Deliver on scheduleFeeds are delivered to an SFTP folder or bucket that each channel fetches, refreshed every morning.

An example calculation

Example calculation, not a customer result. If a feed manager spends 1.5 hours per week on each of 6 clients, that is 9 hours per week. At a loaded cost of 50 USD per hour, the work costs 450 USD per week, or about 23,400 USD per year, against 888 USD per year for the Business plan billed yearly.