When selling online with Lightspeed eCom, your Retail POS is the source of truth for all the general product information. You enter key data like product name, description, SKU, price, or stock in your Retail back office, and then it’s synced to your online store. 

However, your products also have settings specific to your online sales that can be managed only from your eCom admin. You can use the eCom import and export to edit this data in bulk:

• Update details for your products, their options, and variations that are edited on the eCom side.
  For example, when moving catalog online or switching from another Ecommerce platform to eCom, you can add ribbons or gallery images/videos to multiple products at once, manage their shipping settings, and more.
• Add and edit categories for your online store.
• Add and edit 301 URL redirects for Instant Site (if you use this Lightspeed eCom site builder).

If you want to mass add or delete products, enable them for online selling, or edit general product information that is synced from Retail POS to your online store, you can use the import feature in your Lightspeed Retail account.

Lightspeed eCom import and export basics

Lightspeed eCom import format is different from your Retail POS import format. You can read the Formatting CSV files and List of supported CSV columns articles in eCom help center for a detailed explanation on how your eCom CSV files are built and see a set of catalog import case studies. 

Lightspeed eCom catalog export CSVs contain all the product and category data from your online store, including those that are managed from your Retail back office.

Lightspeed eCom import, however, has a number of limitations when used with Retail POS:

• You can update only those product details that are specific to your online sales. The following columns are non-online specific:

  Column name in eCom import format	Matching column name for this data in Retail POS import format
  product_name	name
  product_description	description
  product_price	retail_price
  product_quantity	inventory_STORE_NAME_#
  product_is_inventory_tracked	track_inventory
  product_is_available	active_online
  product_weight	weight
  product_length	length
  product_width	width
  product_height	height
  product_upc	_
  product_brand	brand_name
  product_variation_sku	sku
  product_sku (unless used as the only product identifier)	sku

  You can include these columns in your import CSV file, but they will be ignored.

• You can’t create or delete products or their options/variations (known as variants in your Retail POS) with eCom import. Changes to the following column values are not allowed:
  – product_sku
  – product_option_name
  – product_option_value
  – product_variation_option_{Option name}
• You can only set dropdown menu, radio buttons, or size as types for your options (known as attributes in your Retail POS) when updating them with import. Other option types, as well as input fields, are not supported in eCom when it’s used with retail POS.

To edit your online store catalog, you can also use Bulk Product Editor and Mass Update.

Updating your online catalog with Lightspeed eCom import

After you activate Lightspeed eCom, you can use a combination of eCom import and export to easily update online-specific data in your web store catalog.

To update your online catalog with import and export:

1. From your Retail POS, navigate to Online → Overview, scroll down, and click the Go to Ecom banner.
2. In your eCom admin, click Catalog in the menu on the left and proceed to Data Import & Export.

3. Scroll down to the Export data block and click Export product catalog.

   To export only selected products, go to Catalog → Products in Lightspeed Ecom admin, tick the products, and click Mass Update → Export → Export Selected.
4. A CSV file in the format used in eCom will be downloaded to your device. Open it in any spreadsheet editor like Google Sheets, Excel, or Numbers, and make edits to existing columns or add new ones. For example, you can update gallery images or assign products to categories.
5. Save the file as CSV and import it on the Import & Export page in your eCom admin. For that, click Import File and choose the file on your device, then click Start Import.

That’s it! If there are any errors, you’ll see their descriptions on the page. When the import is complete, you'll see a notification in the top right corner of your store admin and your catalog data will be updated.

In eCom, a product can have several categories or subcategories at once. You can assign products to categories, use Bulk Product Editor and Mass Update, or assign categories with Lightspeed eCom import.