Kaufland Setup

Like every marketplace, Kaufland is set up on the merchantCENTRAL Marketplace Card: in the row KAUFLAND of the page Marketplaces. It holds the hub settings (enabling, license, customer, sales channels with their price lists) and, below them in the section Kaufland Settings, everything that concerns Kaufland only. This page describes the Kaufland part. The whole way to the first order is described in Getting Started.

The connection to Kaufland runs through the Kaufland Seller API with a Client Key and a Secret Key. For testing, there is the Playground: it takes the same keys as the live account but does not touch any order, offer, or price in the live shop.

Opening the Page

Via search: Marketplaces → row KAUFLAND
Via search: Kaufland Setup (the same settings, with the action Open in Hub)
Via the Kaufland Orders → action Setup
Via the setup wizard: Assisted Setup → group “AD merchantCENTRAL Setup” → Kaufland Connector Setup; on the Marketplace Card via the action Setup Wizard

Kaufland Setup as a separate page

Set Up in the merchantCENTRAL setup opens the Marketplace Card on the row KAUFLAND. The page Kaufland Setup shows the same settings without the Marketplace Card, plus the license; the links in error messages lead there as well. From there, Open in Hub takes you to the Marketplace Card.

Setup Step by Step

In the Kaufland Seller Portal, generate a Client Key and Secret Key under Settings → API Keys (German: Einstellungen → API-Schlüssel). There, also check which storefronts (countries) the account sells on, and under Settings create a warehouse (+ Add warehouse, German: Warenlager hinzufügen) and a shipping group for each storefront (Shipping settings, German: Versand-Einstellungen) – without a shipping group, Kaufland does not accept offers. In the Playground, Create Demo Warehouse (Playground) creates a warehouse.
Marketplace Card, section General: Turn on Enabled. Without a license, the trial registration opens (Start Free Trial).
Kaufland Settings: In the section Connection, turn on Use Playground for testing, then enter the Client Key and Secret Key under Authentication.
Test Connection checks whether Kaufland accepts the keys. Then select Default Warehouse ID and Default Shipping Group ID from the lookups: they read the warehouses and shipping groups of your Kaufland account directly from Kaufland.
Open Storefronts and enable the countries you sell on; Add All Storefronts creates missing countries as disabled. The setup wizard enables the default storefront itself when it finishes. Each enabled storefront becomes a sales channel on the Marketplace Card; the channel is created automatically when the storefront is enabled.
Marketplace Card, section Sales Channels: Assign each sales channel a sales price list in its currency (CZ in CZK, PL in PLN, otherwise EUR).
Marketplace Card, section Data Protection: Collective customer or one customer per buyer.
Check the scheduled tasks. The price sync SYNC-PRICES-BC is created disabled – you decide when the prices from the price lists replace the prices on Kaufland. UPLOAD-INVOICES uploads the invoices of the orders on its own.

Fields

Connection

Field	Description
Mode	Shows where the connector's requests go: Simulation (nowhere), Playground, or Live. Display only.
Simulation Mode	The connector works without Kaufland: no request goes out, not even to the Playground. Business Central confirms shipment confirmations, invoices, cancellations, refunds, return decisions, ticket replies, offers, prices, and stock as if Kaufland had accepted them. For demonstrations and tests; needs no keys.
Use Playground	All calls go to the Kaufland Playground (highlighted in yellow). Same keys as the live account, no effect on the live shop.
Base URL	Base URL of the Seller API. Not editable: Use Playground sets it to the address of the live API or of the Playground. The connector accepts no other address and sends no request to one.

Simulation Mode

Only users with the permission set ALN MCK Admin can switch Simulation Mode, and only after a confirmation that suggests No by default. It takes precedence over Use Playground: if both are on, nothing goes to the Playground either. Where Kaufland would return an ID, the connector assigns one with the prefix SIM-. In Simulation Mode, orders, returns, and tickets do not come from Kaufland but only through the demo app AD merchantCENTRAL Demo Kaufland; the scheduled imports run without a request and say so in their status. The setup wizard does not offer the mode, it asks for the keys – switch it on here.

User-Agent

Kaufland requires software providers to send the name of their solution in the User-Agent header. merchantCENTRAL therefore always sends merchantCENTRAL/<Version>; there is no separate field for it.

Copy into a sandbox

When an environment is copied into a sandbox, the connector turns on Use Playground in the copy. The keys are kept, but stock, prices, and shipment confirmations of the copy do not reach the live shop. If the sandbox is meant to work with the live account after all, turn the Playground off there deliberately.

Authentication

Field	Description
Client Key	32-character Client Key from the Kaufland Seller Portal (Settings → API Keys).
Secret Key	64-character Secret Key for the HMAC signing of the API calls. Not displayed – the field only shows Configured or Not configured; click to enter or change it.

Only users who may change the Kaufland setup (permission set ALN MCK Admin) may enter, change, or delete the keys.

API Keys

The Secret Key is stored encrypted. Keep the keys safe – if they are lost, a new key must be generated in the Kaufland Seller Portal.

Per company

The Client Key and Secret Key apply only to the company in which you enter them. This way, each company can work with its own Kaufland account without overwriting another company's keys. If another company works with Kaufland, enter the keys there again.

Technology Partner

With the merchantCENTRAL technology partner credentials, the connector signs every request a second time (headers Shop-Partner-Client-Key and Shop-Partner-Signature) and thus identifies itself to Kaufland as the software in use. The partner credentials belong to Altenbrand, not to the seller. The connector gets them itself from the app's key vault, in production and sandbox environments alike. The setup has no field for them; you do not need to enter anything.

If no partner credentials are available, all requests run with your seller credentials alone. Kaufland accepts them just the same.

Storefront

Field

Description

Default Storefront

Storefront for requests that are not bound to a storefront, such as the lists of warehouses and shipping groups. The setup wizard enables it when it finishes; it thus becomes the first sales channel on the Marketplace Card. You enable further storefronts later under Storefronts. For the imports, it only applies as long as no storefront is set up yet; after that, only enabled storefronts are imported.

Order Import

Field	Description
Create Sales Orders	Imported Kaufland orders become sales orders as soon as they are ready to be sent. On by default.

The import runs through the scheduled task IMPORT-ORDERS (see Kaufland Scheduled Tasks); the setup wizard starts it. It works through the storefronts whose sales channel is switched on on the Marketplace Card and, per storefront, only fetches the orders that have changed since the last complete import (Orders Imported Until on the storefront card). With every sales channel switched off, no order is imported.

The sales orders are created by the central merchantCENTRAL order import – as for all marketplaces. Which customer receives the order is set on the Marketplace Card in the section Data Protection: with Post to a Collective Customer, all orders go to one collective customer; without this setting, the import creates one customer per buyer (recognized by the Kaufland buyer ID). The prices go to merchantCENTRAL as the buyer paid them: gross, including the shipping costs, and the sales order carries them as prices including VAT, regardless of the customer template. The order total includes the shipping costs. The earliest date by which Kaufland expects a unit to be shipped becomes the Latest Ship Date of the sales order.

A sales order is created as soon as the order is to be sent. During the first 15 minutes after the purchase, Kaufland withholds the addresses because the buyer can still cancel; until then, the order stays at Open. If, besides a unit to be sent, another unit is still Open, the order waits until Kaufland has released all units that are not cancelled – otherwise that unit would be missing from the sales order. If a unit is cancelled only after the sales order has been created, the import reports this to merchantCENTRAL, see Cancellation and Sales Order.

If merchantCENTRAL finds neither an item nor an offer for an EAN, the setting Hold Order on Unknown Item of the Marketplace Card decides: switched on, merchantCENTRAL holds the order (status On Hold) until you have assigned the SKU and imported the order again with Import Again; otherwise the order fails (status Error). In both cases, Error Message on the order gives the reason, see Kaufland Orders. The other orders continue, and the next run tries again. If Kaufland cannot deliver the details of an order, the order waits with the reason in Error Message and is read again first during the next import. Import errors are also recorded in the merchantCENTRAL Activity Log.

Offer Defaults

Field	Description
Default Warehouse ID	Kaufland warehouse from which new offers are shipped. The lookup reads the warehouses of your Kaufland account.
Default Shipping Group ID	Shipping group of new offers on the default storefront; the lookup reads this storefront's shipping groups from your Kaufland account. A shipping group belongs to exactly one storefront; the other storefronts have their own on the storefront card. 0 = Kaufland default.
Default VAT Indicator	VAT indicator of new offers, for example Standard Rate, Reduced Rate 1, or Zero Rate. Kaufland maps it to the rate of each storefront.

Inventory

Field	Description
Auto Sync Inventory	Whether the stock of Business Central is sent to Kaufland. Turned off, the switch stops every inventory sync: the scheduled task SYNC-INV-BC and Sync Inventory on the Marketplace Card send no quantities, Sync Stock on the Kaufland Offers ends with a note, and postings no longer mark offers for sending. The offers keep the quantity Kaufland has. On by default.

Sync Status

Read-only.

Field	Description
Last Order Sync	Time of the last order import.
Last Order Sync Status	Result of the last import (green = Success, red = Error, amber = In Progress).
Last Order Sync Message	Message of the last import.

Debugging

Field	Description
Log API Requests	Writes every API call with request and response body to the API Log. For troubleshooting; leave it turned off in day-to-day operation. Entries older than 30 days are deleted automatically. The merchantCENTRAL Activity Log does not depend on this switch.

Actions

The actions are in the menu of the section Kaufland Settings. Orders are imported by the action Import Orders on the Marketplace Card or by the Kaufland Dashboard.

Action	Description
Test Connection	Checks whether Kaufland accepts the Client Key and Secret Key: with a request that Kaufland checks against the keys. If Kaufland refuses, the message gives Kaufland's response.
Delete Secret Key	After confirmation, deletes the Secret Key of this company – for example before you hand over or remove the connector, or when the key was exposed. No request goes to Kaufland until a new key is entered. Only active while a Secret Key is stored.
Create Demo Warehouse (Playground)	Only when the Playground is turned on: creates a warehouse with a placeholder address and enters it as Default Warehouse ID.
Storefronts	Opens the Kaufland Storefront Configuration.
Warehouses	Opens the Kaufland Warehouses.
Carrier Mapping	Opens the Kaufland Carrier Mapping. Only needed where the code or name of a shipping agent does not reveal the carrier.
Scheduled Tasks	Opens the scheduled tasks.
API Log	Opens the API Log. Only visible to users who may read the log.

See also: Getting Started · Troubleshooting · FAQ