Keep an import source up to date automatically

Automatic updates download a supplier’s XML again at the frequency you choose and apply it to your store: new products as drafts, price and stock for the products that match. This guide covers turning it on, what a run changes and what happens when a run fails.

Before you start

• An import source whose dry run report looks right (Ticimax, T-Soft, Google, Meta or Akakçe XML or a custom mapping).
• A paid plan. On Free the Automatic updates card shows an upgrade banner instead of the controls (plans).

Turn on automatic updates

1. Open Import and select the source.
2. In the Automatic updates card choose a Frequency.
3. Choose Turn on automatic updates. The badge changes to On and the card shows “Next run” with the date. The first run starts within a few minutes.

To change the frequency later, pick another one and choose Save next to “Next run”. Turn off stops the schedule; the source and its history stay.

Plan	Frequencies offered
Free	None: sources run dry runs only
Starter	Once a day
Growth	Every hour, every 3, 6 or 12 hours, once a day
Scale	Every 30 minutes and all of the above

What each run does

Each scheduled run is the same as Apply to store, without the confirmation:

1. The whole source is downloaded again and read with the detected format or your custom mapping.
2. The price rules saved with the source are applied: profit margin, VAT when the source excludes it, .90 rounding.
3. Every source product is matched against your synced catalog by barcode first, then SKU.
4. Products with no match are created as drafts. Matched products get only price, compare-at price and stock; stock is written to your primary location.

A run never changes titles, descriptions or images of existing products, never adds variants to a matched product and leaves products that have disappeared from the source as they are. Each run creates and updates at most your plan’s import product limit; the rest is reported as “Plan import limit reached”.

Every run appears under Runs with the type Apply and a result such as “Applied: 3 created, 120 updated, 118 stock levels set, 0 failed”. Last report shows the counts of the latest run.

When a run fails

A run fails when the source cannot be downloaded, is empty, is larger than 1 GB, is not recognised or is malformed, or when writing to Shopify fails ten times in a row. Download and format errors stop the run before anything is written.

• Retries: the next attempt comes 15 minutes later, then 30, then 60 and so on, never later than your chosen frequency. The card shows “The last N automatic runs failed; retrying less often.” and the error appears as “Run failed: …”.
• E-mail: on Starter, Growth and Scale an “import failed” e-mail with the reason and a link to the source goes to your store e-mail, at most one per source per day. Turn it off with Email notifications under Settings. Growth and Scale also list import runs and failures in the weekly summary.
• Recovery: after the next successful run the counter resets and runs return to the normal frequency.

A run that is still in progress when the next one is due is not doubled: that turn is skipped.

Plan changes

• Moving to Free switches automatic updates off at the next due run.
• If the chosen frequency is shorter than the new plan allows, it is raised to the plan’s shortest frequency.

To change the price rules or the T-Soft option names, delete the source and add it again. Products already in your store are matched by barcode or SKU, so products that carry one are not created twice.

Common problems

Symptom	Cause	Fix
No frequency to choose	Free plan	Upgrade to a paid plan
Only “Once a day” is offered	Starter plan	Growth offers hourly runs
Prices did not change	Barcode and SKU match no store variant	Check the Issues list and the barcodes in Shopify
“Variant isn’t in the matched store product”	The supplier added a size or colour	Add the variant in Shopify; runs do not add variants
Skipped as “Already created as a draft”	An earlier run created the product, and it is not in the synced catalog yet (or was deleted)	Nothing to do: a product this source created is never created twice

More about the report: Import products from a Ticimax XML.