If you already created parent and its variants and wanted to change the current variation types due to the certain limitations of marketplaces like Amazon, you can easily change the variation types on StoreAutomator and make it compatible with the related marketplace.
You can easily change your existing variation types by exporting the parent and child products. To do that, you need to change the child products under that parent into single products. Then, you need to delete and recreate the parent with a new variation type. After that, you need to turn them into child products with the same parent.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If your variation type will be “Size,Color”, the variation options must be valid options as “X-Large,Red” e.g
Separating Child Products from Parent as Singles
Here are the steps you need to follow:
1- Go to the “Inventory”, select related parent and child products and click to “Export>Custom…”
2- Select the fields “Parentage, Parent SKU, Variation Options and Variation Types” from the custom fields export selector and click the export.
3- Download the file from the “Notifications” form the top right of the screen.
4- Open the exported file, delete the data inside the parent_sku, variation_options, variation_types that belong to child products and change the value “Child” to “Single” in the parentage column.
5- Upload the file back into the SA from the top right.
After this action your child products will be single products and you are ready to delete your parent to recreate it with the new variation type.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You need to export all the data for the parent because you need to delete it and create it from scratch. To do that:
Exporting Parent’s Data
1- Select the parent and go to “Export>Custom…” and select all the fields you can export (except the read only fields) and click to export.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Read only fields are all the “Information” tab fields and fulfillable qty, default wh fulfillable qty. If you try to upload these fields into the SA, you will be most likely to receive an error.
2- Find and change the value in the “variation_types” column with the new variation type.
3- Before uploading the file, delete the parent from SA UI permanently.
4- Upload the file back into the SA.
This action will recreate the parent in SA with new variation types and with all exported data. After that, you can assign child products to the parent again. To do that:
Merging Singles as Child Products under the Parent again
1- Open the first exported file the one contains only “parentage, parent sku, variation options and variation types” fields and
- Change the products from “Single” to “Child” under the parentage column.
- Change the parent product’s “variation type” to the new one you have assigned to the parent.
- Assign parent SKUs to the child products.
- Assign new variation options for the child products.
- Assign new variation types for the child products.
2- Upload the file back into the SA.
This will merge the single products that you have separated before with the parent you have changed its variation types.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please end the live listings before changing its variation types and parentage in StoreAutomator.