Manufacturer Selection
With Manufacturer Selection you import only the manufacturers you actually care about, per supplier. All other records are skipped during import — the item pool stays lean and imports run faster.
What is this for?
Large supplier catalogs often contain tens of thousands of articles from hundreds of manufacturers, only a fraction of which is relevant for your assortment. Without a filter, the entire catalog ends up in your supplier data.
With Manufacturer Selection you maintain one selection list per supplier. merchantCENTRAL applies it automatically on every import — regardless of which connector delivers the data.
How it works
- Analyze manufacturers: The Analyze Manufacturers action (on the selection page or the connector dashboard) downloads the connector's source data and fills the manufacturer catalog — without importing any article data. Alternatively, a regular first import fills the catalog as well.
- Select manufacturers: Open the Manufacturer Selection (supplier card or connector dashboard, action Select Manufacturers) and mark the manufacturers you want (Selected). Actions: Select All, Deselect All, Invert.
- Activate the filter: Set Manufacturer Filter Active on the supplier. From now on, all runs import only the selected manufacturers.
Behavior in detail
| Situation | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Filter inactive (default) | Everything is imported; every manufacturer seen is automatically registered as Selected. |
| Filter active | Only selected manufacturers are imported; the import message shows the number of skipped rows. |
| A new manufacturer appears while the filter is active | It is skipped but registered as New. The dashboard shows the New Manufacturers cue; after reviewing, acknowledge the new entries (Acknowledge New). |
| A manufacturer is deselected | Already imported data is kept. Remove it on demand via the Purge Unselected Data action (with confirmation and summary). |
| Empty manufacturer name in the source | Always passes the filter (records without manufacturer information are never lost). |
Interplay with manufacturer name mappings
The filter is applied after the manufacturer name mappings: you select the corrected, canonical manufacturer name — spelling variants used by the supplier do not matter.
Connector-specific notes
| Connector | Note |
|---|---|
| Sato, Toshiba | Single-manufacturer catalogs — a selection would be pointless; the filter only acts as a technical backstop. |
| Ingram Micro | The connector's Catalog Subscriptions remain the primary, server-side filter; the central manufacturer selection acts as an additional backstop (e.g. for keyword matches of other manufacturers). |
| ITscope | The manufacturer name comes from the export's product master; offers without a master data match have no manufacturer name and always pass the filter. |
Fields on the selection page
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer Name | Canonical (mapped) name from the imports. |
| Selected | Only checked manufacturers are imported while the filter is active. |
| New | Manufacturer that appeared since the last review. |
| Offered (last run) | Rows in the most recent source data. |
| Imported / In Stock | Supplier data currently present for this manufacturer. |