[TheShowGoesOn]

Hello Good Morning,

Ok here's the thing. One of My clients just gave a their Inventory file. it has various fields like Stock Number, Desc, an Item Number they created, Category (i guess that could be Department),Inactive (True or False), and the Units of Measurment for each Item.

Now I exported a REDI file, and for the past 2 days i have been trying to understand the format. Also trying to understand Headers and Footers, <-- what goes in them? Trying to match back the fields in the Inventory file, with the fields and the tags in the REDI when I open it with Excel, has turned out to be quite complicated and confusing

Can anyone assist me in importing this Inventory file into Retail Edge? Is there an easier way it can be done ?

Thanks
PJW
Software Analyst

[RetailEdge Moderator]

Have you looked at the following topic?

http://www.retailedge.com/phpBB/viewtop ... f=4&t=1576

The REDI file is really just a modfied CSV file to allow multiple pieces of information to to imported at the same time (department, vendor, class, matrix definitions, inventory items).

Hello Good Morning,

Ok here's the thing. One of My clients just gave a their Inventory file. it has various fields like Stock Number, Desc, an Item Number they created, Category (i guess that could be Department),Inactive (True or False), and the Units of Measurment for each Item.

Now I exported a REDI file, and for the past 2 days i have been trying to understand the format. Also trying to understand Headers and Footers, <-- what goes in them? Trying to match back the fields in the Inventory file, with the fields and the tags in the REDI when I open it with Excel, has turned out to be quite complicated and confusing

Can anyone assist me in importing this Inventory file into Retail Edge? Is there an easier way it can be done ?

Thanks
PJW
Software Analyst

[TheShowGoesOn]

ok so basically I have created an Excel spread sheet, with the various starting and ending tags <REDI_Invent> </REDI_Invent> and the other tags.

I used the fields from the Inventory file. What I did was I copy and pasted the fields from the inventory file into the new Excel spread sheet under the first start tag <REDI_Invent> and then closed it with </REDI_Invent>. Can this be done? or do I have to use the original field names like Inv_Sku, Inv_Desc, Inv_ItemID, Loc_Settings_LocID, Inv_Quan, Inv_DepartID, Inv_VendorID, Inv_ClassID, Inv_Cost_Last, Inv_Cost_Avg etc etc etc ?

Thanks

[RetailEdge Moderator]

You need to use the original field names. Insert a line and put them in your spreadsheet. They must be in the correct order. So you should make sure your Inventory files columns match up before you do this.

ok so basically I have created an Excel spread sheet, with the various starting and ending tags <REDI_Invent> </REDI_Invent> and the other tags.

I used the fields from the Inventory file. What I did was I copy and pasted the fields from the inventory file into the new Excel spread sheet under the first start tag <REDI_Invent> and then closed it with </REDI_Invent>. Can this be done? or do I have to use the original field names like Inv_Sku, Inv_Desc, Inv_ItemID, Loc_Settings_LocID, Inv_Quan, Inv_DepartID, Inv_VendorID, Inv_ClassID, Inv_Cost_Last, Inv_Cost_Avg etc etc etc ?

Thanks

[TheShowGoesOn]

well ok, another question. What if the inventory data file I have only some of the fields match back? right now I have similar fields to Inv_Sku, and the description, and also the Item ID and others which I will change eventually. How about fields that I have in this file that Do not exist in retail edge, that are necessary ? how do I get around that?

Thanks
PJW

[TheShowGoesOn]

I get an error --> Invalid Line (3): Incorrect number of fields. When I view the error, the Import preview shows a square dotted line around Inv_Sku(A50). What does this mean? and how can it be resolved?

Thanks
PJW

[RetailEdge Moderator]

There are fields that need are required for the import. Generally it is any piece of information that on an inventory editor is in red. Typically it would be stock number, description, vendor, department, cost and price. The one exception would be ItemID which RetailEdge creates when you create an item. When importing new items from Excel you would just create an ID starting with a six digit number (say 100000) and then have the next cell ad one to the next number etc. (B3+1). That will create consecutive ItemIDs when they are pulled into RetailEdge.

We are kind of strict when it comes to importing data. From within the program we have a lot of control of how the data gets input. But when we import we don't have the same level of control and so require a lot of data.

Let us know if you need more help or would like us to do some of the importing for you.

well ok, another question. What if the inventory data file I have only some of the fields match back? right now I have similar fields to Inv_Sku, and the description, and also the Item ID and others which I will change eventually. How about fields that I have in this file that Do not exist in retail edge, that are necessary ? how do I get around that?

Thanks
PJW

[TheShowGoesOn]

I get an error --> Invalid Line (3): Incorrect number of fields. When I view the error, the Import preview shows a square dotted line around Inv_Sku(A50). What does this mean? and how can it be resolved?

Thanks

[RetailEdge Moderator]

Typically this means that you don't have the correct number of fields included in your REDI file.

What might help you is to view the file as Text and make sure it is correct. Two things that are typical after saving the file in Excel as a CSV:

1. Excel puts commas (correctly) after all the expected fields in the REDI file. For instance

<REDI_Invent>,,,,,,,,,,,
Inv_Sku, Inv_Desc, Inv_ItemID, Loc_Settings_LocID, Inv_Quan, Inv_DepartID, ........

because the second line of the CSV file is dictating the number of fields, the CSV Export will put commas after the start tag because it thinks that these are blank values in the file. These commas need to be stripped.

2. Excel strips commas (incorrectly) after a certain number of lines.

A CSV file should have commas between every expected field in the export (CSV Comma Separated Values). However Excel in its infinite wisdom chooses to start stripping commas (in certain versions) after about the 18th row of the CSV if it does not see values in all the fields. So what helps is to force Excel to see these fields by always placing a value in the last column of the Excel spreadsheet. A dash will work.

I get an error --> Invalid Line (3): Incorrect number of fields. When I view the error, the Import preview shows a square dotted line around Inv_Sku(A50). What does this mean? and how can it be resolved?

Thanks

[TheShowGoesOn]

Hey hey, I have modified my Inventory file by putting in the cost of each corresponding item. I go to import the file. The file does import, but when I check my inventory Manager, nothing has changed. How can I resolve this problem?

[RetailEdge Moderator]

There are three different types of inventory import types:

1. Add New Records Only (not quantity)
2. Add New and update/replace existing records (not quantity)
3. Update/replace existing records only (not quantity)

This gives you the flexibility to import files from different sources more easily.

The reason that we don't change quantity is just to be conservative. Most people who are importing inventory just either want to change what they have in the file or want to add some new inventory that they created in another copy of RetailEdge.

Remember REDI stands for RetailEdge Data Interchange and is designed for users who are a trade show or are at a trunk show and have created off-line sales in a laptop or off-site copy of RetailEdge to be able to export this information from the off-site machine and bring it into the store machine. This is going to be much less important in the future since we now have RetailEdge Island our mobile POS solution that will allow all these types of operations to be done real-time.

If you want to bring in quantities then you should either create a REDI Receiving file and bring the items into Receiving so that you can Update your inventory and quantities in RetailEdge. Or (what we usually do) is create a second file with two columns (SKU, Quantity). Then you can just import this into a PICS (Physical Inventory Collection System) file and change your quantities by updating inventory from this file.

Hey hey, I have modified my Inventory file by putting in the cost of each corresponding item. I go to import the file. The file does import, but when I check my inventory Manager, nothing has changed. How can I resolve this problem?