Item Variants on Kaufland
Kaufland sells every size and every colour as a product of its own: with its own EAN, product page, images, price, and stock. Business Central therefore lists an item with variants per variant. Each variant gets a Kaufland marketplace item of its own, sold under the bar code of the variant.
Listing items with variants
Add to Marketplace (item card or item list) creates one row per variant that is not blocked for an item with variants. No row for the whole item is created. It would be a single offer selling the stock of all sizes and colours together.
| What | Where from |
|---|---|
| EAN and Kaufland ID of the row | Bar code of the variant: an item reference of type Bar Code with the variant code, in the base unit of measure or without a unit. The item's GTIN is never used for a variant. |
| Title | Item description and variant description, e.g. "T-Shirt Basic - Red, M". |
| Storefront | The storefront of the sales channel chosen, as for an item without variants. |
- An item with variants needs no GTIN of its own. If no variant that is not blocked has a bar code in the base unit of measure or without a unit, though, Kaufland refuses the item when it is added: there would be nothing to sell it under. The same applies when all variants are blocked.
- If Kaufland already sells the item as a whole on the storefront – an offer under the item's GTIN, without a variant (BC Variant Code) –, it is refused there as well. With variant rows, that offer would have no marketplace item any more and would get a quantity of 0 from the inventory sync. On its offer card, assign the variant the offer sells, or delete it at Kaufland, then add the item again.
- Add to Marketplace counts a refused item as skipped, without a reason. The EAN Lookup names the reason when you add the item there under the bar code of a variant.
- A variant without a bar code still gets a row, but without an EAN. Upload Product Data reports "The EAN is missing." there. Add the bar code of the variant, and enter it in the row's Marketplace Item Details as EAN/GTIN and as Marketplace Item ID. On the product card, the EAN is read-only.
- If a variant is added later, simply add the item again. Only the row of the new variant is created; the existing ones stay as they are.
- An item already listed as a whole (a row without variant code) stays listed that way. It is not split into variant rows on its own.
The EAN Lookup lists an item with variants under the bar code of one of its variants – the bar code in the base unit of measure, under which the variant is listed as well. A second bar code or the bar code of a pack is refused, naming the bar code the variant is listed under. The lookup does not change the item's GTIN.
Product data, offers, stock, and price
Everything else follows the variant of the row:
- Upload Product Data sends the product data under the variant's EAN, with the title and the images of the variant (see below). As for every product, the first upload is done by hand. After that, the scheduled task UPLOAD-PRODDATA keeps the data current.
- Create Offers and Create Offer create the offer under the variant's EAN, at the variant's price.
- merchantCENTRAL calculates stock and price per variant, with the settings of its row (percentage, safety stock, fixed quantity, maximum quantity).
- An order for the EAN of a variant results in a sales line with item and variant.
Images per variant
Every variant has a product page of its own on Kaufland. That is why Upload Product Data sends the images of the variant on a variant row:
| Row | Images sent |
|---|---|
| Variant with images of its own (assigned with Assign to Variants in the item images) | First its own images, then the general images of the item (images without a variant). The first own image is the title image; an image of image type Main comes first. |
| Variant without images of its own | The general images. |
| Item without variant | All images of the item, as before. |
Only images with a public address are sent, because Kaufland fetches every image itself. If none of the variant's images has an image URL, the upload sends the row's Primary Image URL – the image Kaufland knows for exactly this EAN (Refresh Product on the product card fills it). If that is empty as well, it sends all images of the item that have a public address: Kaufland does not sell a product without an image well. The variant then also shows photos of other colours, though. Assign images of its own to it, or give the item a general image.
Shop gallery and flagging
The shop gallery on the Kaufland row of a variant shows the images its product page receives: first its own, then the general ones. When an assignment changes, merchantCENTRAL flags all Kaufland rows of the item for upload. UPLOAD-PRODDATA then sends the product data of the rows that were uploaded before. A row whose product data has never been sent to Kaufland waits for the first upload by hand.
Kaufland does not support Upload to Shop and Import from Shop in the gallery. The images go out with the product data.