Export a catalog for a customer
Running an export is three steps and one habit. The habit — reading the validation report before delivering — is what separates a routine monthly delivery from a phone call from the customer's Einkaufsleiter.
Run a profile
- Open the export profile and select Run.
- Confirm the update type: full catalog or update. This is the field people change without thinking about it — sending a full catalog when the customer expected a price update replaces their entire assortment, including articles their buyers had on saved lists.
- Confirm the effective date if the profile carries price validity windows.
- Start the run. Large catalogs take minutes; the run continues if you close the screen.
- When it finishes, open the validation report before doing anything else.
Read the validation report
The report has three sections and they need three different reactions.
| Section | Means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Errors | The file is not valid, or articles were excluded | Fix before delivering. Do not send. |
| Warnings | Articles exported with something missing | Decide, per warning type, whether it is acceptable |
| Summary | Counts: articles in, articles out, articles excluded | Check the numbers against what you expected |
The summary is the one to read first, and the check is boring and effective: does the article count match what this customer should receive? A profile that suddenly exports 39,000 articles instead of 800 has lost its assortment filter, and the file will validate perfectly.
Common warnings and what they usually mean:
- Missing order unit or packing quantity. The most frequent rejection cause in BMEcat. Fix it in the catalog; it is required data, not export cosmetics.
- Missing mandatory classification feature. See Classify products.
- No price for the article in this price list. The article is in the assortment but not in the customer's price list. Either it should not be in the assortment, or the price list is incomplete. Both are commercial questions, not technical ones.
- Missing translation for a required language. The value fell back. Decide whether a fallback is acceptable in a file that will be read by machines and buyers in that country.
- Image missing or unreachable. Only matters if the customer requires images — many do, and reject on it.
Deliver
Three delivery routes, and the profile should carry one of them so it happens the same way every time.
| Route | Fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Download | One-off requests, small customers | Nobody records what was sent when |
| SFTP | Recurring corporate deliveries | Path and filename conventions are usually specified exactly |
| Portal upload | Marketplaces, some procurement systems | Often manual, often has its own validation that differs from yours |
For SFTP, the customer's specification will name the directory, the filename pattern and sometimes a trigger file that must be written after the catalog so their importer knows the transfer is complete. Follow it literally. See SFTP and file exchange.
For portal uploads — Mercateo, Amazon Business, a customer's own supplier portal — expect a second validation on their side with rules yours does not know about. Budget for one or two rejection rounds on a first delivery and none afterwards. See Sell through marketplaces and channels.
The first delivery to a new customer
Always the same sequence, and skipping it is the most reliable way to lose two weeks:
- Export 20 articles using the real profile, not a hand-made file.
- Send it and ask for written confirmation that it loaded.
- Fix whatever comes back. There will be something.
- Send the full catalog.
- Only then enable the schedule.
What to check
- The run history shows the run completed, with the article count you expect.
- The file arrived at the destination — verify, do not assume the job said "delivered".
- The customer confirmed the load. For a scheduled profile, agree with them what happens if a delivery fails: silence is how a customer runs on a three-month-old catalog without anyone noticing.
- The next scheduled run is set correctly, with the right update type.
Next
- Catalog export profiles
- Monitor syncs — the same discipline applied to everything else leaving the platform.