The category listings report in the Reports > Inventory Reports section of Amazon and shows the structure of your catalog in Amazon with all of the fields. It is powerful to identify where there are issues in your catalog quickly vs looking in Seller Central at every single section of your listing. It is also powerful to make changes faster to your catalog such as listing new products and placing a group of products underneath a parent listing via a child variation.
Download your Category Listings Report
- Save a copy of the Category Listing Report in case any issues are made you can always upload the original file to go backwards
- First go to this section in seller central: Menu > Reports > Inventory Reports
- In this section you will click on the drop down menu for “Select Report Type” then select “Category Listings Report (All)” then just download it as an excel file
- Now that you have the excel file I recommend unhiding all of the columns in the section “Template” this is where you will be editing or adding new products and then eventually uploading this whole file to make changes.
How to group child ASINs under a parent ASINs using the category listings report.
- To add a parent ASIN that you want to place a child ASIN underneath you will need to:
- Create a new row
- update_delete = update - this when you’re creating a new listing
- item_sku = input the name of the PARENT SKU. usually if I have color variations I will add the color tag at the end of the CHILD SKUs and the parent SKU will have no tag at the end
- brand_name - input a brand name
- item_name = usually I just re-enter the parent SKU name here
- manufacturer = your brand’s name
- item_type = input what category it’s in
- parent_child = parent
- variation_theme = input the variation theme here. For my product it was “ColorName”
- Now if you already made the child listings as standalone listings you will have to do:
- parent_child = child
- parent_sku = input the parent SKU that you created that you want to group them under
- relationship_type = “variation”
- variation_theme = ColorName
- color_name = should have some color name in here like “Black”
- color_map = I just re-enter the color name, i.e. “Black” for example
- Once you have made the necessary changes in the Category Listings Report you can upload this file in the: Menu > Catalog > Add Products via Upload section
This Category Listing Report is great for inputting text for search terms, bullet points, size information etc in a bulk way to make updates quick. The report is scary because of how huge it is so I recommend testing with something that isn’t as important in your catalog first before you do everything at once. The principle to keep in mind here is “measure twice and cut once”
Photos for visual people
This is where you can get to “Inventory Reports”
This is where you can find the “Category Listings Report”
This is how it shows by default for me and how I download the report
Save the report as {file name} + “original” so you have a backup. Then save a new version as “updated” which will be the file you update. Of course you can always go back into this report section to get the original report to just upload that again.
Enable editing in excel and unhide the hidden columns
Here’s the section you need to go to in order to upload the “Category Listings Report” to upload the new changes to your catalog
Potential error codes you may get when uploading your file
You might get prevented from making changes to one of your listings like the message below:
8541 ERROR message: The value “what you’re trying to input” specified cannot be used as it conflicts with the value “what you had previously” for ASIN '#####' in the Amazon catalog. If this is ASIN '####', update the value to match the ASIN data. If this is a different product, update identifying information (UPC/EAN/Part Number/etc.).
This error, called a matching error, occurs when your SKU data, mainly product ID (UPC, EAN, JAN, ISBN, GCID), appears to correspond to an existing ASIN, but some of the information submitted does not match the product information that is already in the Amazon catalog for that ASIN.
This means that the system thinks you are trying to change a key attribute for that ASIN which cannot be changed. This is a common error when updating product details for Brand Registered listings and variation creation. For example, if you are listing a T-Shirt in red, but our system has that product ID listed as blue, the system sees this data as a conflict, and will generate this matching error.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Always attempt to use the ASIN as the product ID instead of UPC if it is possible. It commonly appears when seller use the UPC in the feed files instead of the ASIN the listing already has.
In my situation the root cause of the problem was that I was using the EAN in the flat file and not the product’s ASIN.
If the above does not work then with your flat file contact seller support via phone and provide them with the batch ID number that is giving you problems to try to solve the problem. They should be able to force the changes you want on your behalf.
Best of Luck!