Amazon flat files: download, fill in and upload bulk listing templates

One kitchen towel, three colours, two sizes: for the invented brand LINDRAVO that makes six variations and one parent product. Six new products are easy to create by hand in Seller Central. Six hundred products turn into a week of clicking. Amazon’s flat file puts this work into one Excel file.

Flat files are meant for sellers on the Professional selling plan. Vendors upload their product data through a separate spreadsheet upload in Vendor Central, see the article on vendor product listings in the catalogue.

With the LINDRAVO towels as the example, you go through the whole upload: download the right template, fill it in and upload it, find errors in the processing report and change existing offers in bulk. Because if the image URL is missing for the sand towel, the file uploads fine, but that variation cannot be bought.

We checked the steps in the German Seller Central and on Amazon’s European help pages (amazon.de and amazon.co.uk). We did not check US Seller Central, so some labels on amazon.com may differ.

What is an Amazon flat file?

With a flat file you create or change many products and offers at once. The spreadsheet follows Amazon’s format. Amazon now calls these files “bulk listing templates”. Many help pages and most sellers still say “flat file”, and the German help calls them „Lagerbestandsdatei“ (inventory file).

You can upload the file directly as an Excel file (.xlsx) or as a tab-delimited text file (.txt or .tsv). You no longer need to convert it to a text file first.

A flat file is mainly used for these tasks:

• create new products that are not yet in the Amazon catalogue (Product Spreadsheet),
• create offers for products that already have an ASIN (Listing Loader),
• change prices and stock (Price and Quantity template),
• change product details of existing offers (listing action “Edit”),
• remove offers (listing action “Delete”).

The spreadsheet upload in Seller Central is still available. Amazon only switched off the XML and flat file listings feeds in the SP-API: deprecated on 18 March 2024, ended at the end of July 2025. Software that sends listings through the API now uses the Listings Items API or the JSON_LISTINGS_FEED. More on the interfaces in the article on the Amazon API.

Which template do you need? Product Spreadsheet, Listing Loader, Price and Quantity

Create new kitchen towels, join an existing listing as another seller, or only change the stock: Amazon offers three templates for these tasks. What matters is whether the product is already in the catalogue and which data you want to change.

Template	Used for	Max. per file	Preview
Product Spreadsheet	new products that are not in the catalogue, with all product details; up to 20 product types per file	10,000 product rows	yes, up to 1,000 SKUs
Listing Loader	offers for products with an existing ASIN: product ID and offer data	20,000 SKUs; prefilled file for up to 500 IDs	no
Price and Quantity	only SKU, price and stock of existing offers	1,000,000 SKUs	no

In the German Seller Central interface the second template now appears as „Angebots-Assistent“ (listing assistant). Most Amazon help pages still call it Listing Loader. It is the same template.

For LINDRAVO this means: the kitchen towels are new, so the brand needs the Product Spreadsheet. If another seller later wants to sell the same towels as a second offer, the Listing Loader is enough.

Uploading your own spreadsheet

Are the kitchen towels already in a spreadsheet from your other store? Amazon also accepts an Excel or TSV file in your own format. AI maps your columns to the Amazon fields and creates drafts from them. Amazon may ask you to confirm the column mapping. This can take a few hours. You review the drafts by downloading them or in the online spreadsheet before they go live.

Old category-specific templates

Amazon has discontinued the old per-category templates and the Book Loader. If you upload an old template, Seller Central shows a notice and offers to download a converted template. The converted file keeps your data but may ask for new required fields.

Download an Amazon flat file

In Seller Central, open “Add Products” (in the German interface under „Produkte“, in the classic menu under „Katalog“). Select the “Spreadsheet” tab. Below the upload field you find the link “Download Blank Template”.

Clicking “Download Blank Template” opens a window where you choose a template to start with. The three templates appear as separate cards:

• products that are already in the Amazon catalogue, with the button for the Listing Loader,
• products that are not yet in the Amazon catalogue, with “Download Product Spreadsheet”,
• updating price and quantity, with the button for the Price and Quantity template.

Below them are cards for updating product details, further templates for special use cases, and the templates you created before.

For the Product Spreadsheet Amazon guides you through a short wizard:

1. Search for the right product type, for LINDRAVO with a search term such as “kitchen towel”, or browse by category.
2. Review the list of selected product types. Up to 20 fit in one file.
3. Choose the stores (marketplaces) the file is for.
4. Choose the language of the spreadsheet.
5. Create the spreadsheet.

If you have saved listing preferences in Seller Central, Amazon can use them to prefill fields in the template.

Several marketplaces in one file

If the LINDRAVO towels are to be sold in several stores, select them when you create the template. The file gets extra columns for each store. Enter at least one price for each store, in its local currency. If the product page is missing in another store, Amazon creates it by translation. This can take up to 48 hours. Use the same decimal separator in the whole file.

Structure of the file: sheets, column groups, required fields

Next to the template sheet, the file contains instructions, a tab on image requirements and the data definitions with the valid values. Read the data definitions before you enter values: many fields only accept values from a fixed list.

The columns of the template are sorted into groups:

• Variations
• Product identity and details
• Images
• Offer (including the prices for Amazon Business)
• Shipping
• Safety and compliance

Each field is marked as required, conditionally required or optional. How many required fields there are depends on the product type. You show and hide optional columns with the ”+” and ”−” buttons, or switch to the standard view with “1” and to the extended view with “2”.

How to fill in the flat file

One row per SKU: that is how you work through the template. The following fields cause most of the errors in practice.

SKU

The SKU (seller SKU) is your own item number. It must be unique and cannot be renamed later. If you upload new data for an existing SKU, it replaces the old data. SKUs that are not in the file stay unchanged.

Choose the SKU so that you can still read it later. A proven structure is BRAND_ITEM_VARIATION_FULFILMENT. For LINDRAVO it looks like this:

• LIND_GT_PARENT (parent product)
• LIND_GT_SAGE_50X70_FBA
• LIND_GT_SAND_40X60_FBM

Sage or sand, FBA or FBM: the SKU tells you in every report. You can choose another scheme too. Then stick to it.

Product ID and listing action

New listings need a product ID, for example a GTIN (EAN or UPC).

The listing action column tells Amazon what to do with the row:

• “Create or Replace (Full Update)”: creates the product or overwrites all data of the SKU. If the cell is empty, this value applies.
• “Edit (Partial Update)”: changes only the fields you fill in.
• “Delete”: removes the SKU.

The Listing Loader uses its own set of values: create or edit, add product, delete and ignored.

Images

Without an image a new product is not buyable. Enter the image URL in the file or upload the images later with the image upload in Seller Central. The URLs must be publicly accessible. Amazon’s image requirements are covered in the article on Amazon product images. Offers for existing ASINs do not need their own images.

Variations

LINDRAVO sells one kitchen towel in three colours and two sizes. In the file this becomes a product family:

• one row for the parent product with the parentage level “Parent”,
• six rows for the variations with the parentage level “Child” and the SKU of the parent product,
• the same variation theme in all seven rows, here size and colour.

The product type decides which variation themes you can choose. Each variation needs its own title, for LINDRAVO with colour and size. This way the sage towel can be told apart from the sand towel. How variations work and which mistakes are common is explained in the article on parent-child variations.

Handling time and number format

The handling time says how many days you need before you ship, from 0 to 30. If you leave the field empty, Amazon assumes 1 to 2 days. Send the handling time with every update, or Amazon resets it to the default.

Format price fields in Excel as numbers, not as text. Use the same decimal separator in the whole file.

Upload and check the flat file

You start the upload on the same page where you downloaded the template.

For new listings with up to 1,000 SKUs Amazon also offers an AI enhancement. It applies to the Product Spreadsheet and fills missing fields with AI-generated content. You get the results as drafts; Amazon marks the added values in yellow. Review every draft before you approve it.

Amazon processes large files in up to 8 hours. The upload status goes back 3 months or 100 uploads.

Read the processing report and fix errors

The upload status page lists your uploads in a table with columns for the file name (with date and time below), file type, batch ID, successful/submitted SKUs and status. The status reads, for example, done or action required. From there you download the processing summary for an upload.

You can fix the report directly and upload it again: it is an Excel file itself. The summary sits at the top, below it the submission status for each row: SUCCESS, SUCCESS (OTHER ERROR) or ERROR.

For each problem the report gives the record number (original-record-number), an error code (error-code), the type (error-type: warning or error) and a message (error-message). According to Amazon’s help, record 1 is row 3 of your file. A warning means Amazon processed the row, but the product may not appear the way you intended.

Fix only the affected rows and upload them again. Say LINDRAVO is missing the image URL for sand, 40 x 60 cm. Exactly this SKU is not buyable after the upload. Add the URL and upload this one row again. The other towels do not need to go through the upload a second time.

Change existing offers in bulk

There are two ways to change existing offers:

1. Download the category listings report from the inventory reports, change the values and upload the file again.
2. Take a blank template, enter only the SKU and the changed fields, and set the listing action to “Edit (Partial Update)”.

If you change only a few fields, the second way is faster. Suppose you rename your private label brand, and the new brand name must appear in 1,000 listings. Then the file needs 1,000 rows with SKU, brand and listing action. All other fields stay as they are.

The listing action “Delete” removes the offer and the product data of the SKU. If the sand towel should only be off sale for a while, set the quantity to 0. If you delete the parent product instead, the whole variation family falls apart.

Change prices and stock with the Price and Quantity template

For pure price and stock changes the Price and Quantity template is the easiest. Amazon generates it per language. It contains the columns SKU, handling time, quantity and price. If you are registered for Amazon Business, columns for business prices are added. If a SKU appears twice in the file, only the first row counts. This template has no upload preview.

Do not use this template to switch products to Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). Amazon needs more fields for that. Use the Listing Loader or the Product Spreadsheet instead.

A repricer should adjust prices, but not sell the kitchen towel at a fraction of its price. Price limits help against that. Amazon’s older help page on the price and quantity file describes a minimum and a maximum price per SKU for this. If a price falls outside these limits, Amazon deactivates the offer and sends you an email. You can change the limits at any time. It is an emergency brake: better an offer is offline for a short time than sold far below its value.

Business prices and quantity discounts for Amazon Business

If you also sell the kitchen towels to business customers, you first set a business price and then up to five quantity tiers. For each tier you enter either a fixed price per unit or a percentage off the business price. The business price must not be higher than the standard price, or Amazon does not activate it. Enter the prices separately for each store.

For new products the business prices are in the “Offer” column group of the Product Spreadsheet. For existing offers use the Price and Quantity template or the Listing Loader. A business price at least 3 % below the standard price can lower the fees on business orders. How Amazon fees are made up is covered in a separate article.

Change listing fields of many SKUs with AMALYTIX

One wrong value in one column, hundreds of affected listings: with a partial update you only see in the processing report whether a value fits. AMALYTIX has the Bulk Listing Updates page for this.

You upload a CSV file with one row per SKU. The columns use Amazon’s internal field names, for example item_name for the title. An empty cell changes nothing, a value you enter replaces the whole content of the field. Before anything goes to Amazon, AMALYTIX reads the current listing and checks your values against the rules of the product type. This creates a task that you approve. It works for seller and vendor listings.

After sending, the change log in Content Monitoring shows for each field whether Amazon applied the change.

Bulk Listing Updates only changes existing listings. For prices, offers, images, variation themes and other structured fields you still need the flat file. Changes you have sent cannot be undone. So test a new file with a few SKUs first. You decide which fields to change and which values are right, and you approve every task.

The feature is included in the Professional plan. All column rules are in the AMALYTIX help under “Bulk Listing Updates” after you log in.

Conclusion

For LINDRAVO’s new kitchen towels the Product Spreadsheet is right. Another seller uses the Listing Loader for their offers on the existing ASINs. If only prices and stock change, the Price and Quantity template is enough. Download the template fresh in Seller Central, because Amazon no longer accepts old files.

Validate new products before the upload, and read the processing report afterwards. The status alone does not tell you whether the sand towel is buyable. For later changes a partial update with “Edit (Partial Update)” and only the changed fields is enough.

Frequently asked questions about Amazon flat files

Where do I download an Amazon flat file template?

In Seller Central under “Add Products”, “Spreadsheet” tab, link “Download Blank Template”. There you choose between the Product Spreadsheet, the Listing Loader and the Price and Quantity template. For the Product Spreadsheet you then choose the product type, stores and language.

Do I have to save the flat file as a text file?

No. You can upload the Excel file (.xlsx) directly. A tab-delimited text file (.txt or .tsv) also works, but is no longer needed.

Are there still flat file templates by category?

No. Amazon has discontinued the per-category templates. Today you create a Product Spreadsheet for up to 20 product types. If you upload an old template, Seller Central converts it to the new format and offers the converted template for download.

How many products fit in one flat file?

The Product Spreadsheet holds up to 10,000 product rows, the Listing Loader up to 20,000 SKUs and the Price and Quantity template up to 1,000,000 SKUs. Split larger amounts across several files.

Why is my product not buyable after the upload?

Common reasons are a missing image or a price outside the price limits you set. The processing report gives the exact reason for each row.

Is there an Amazon flat file validator?

Yes, for the Product Spreadsheet. When you validate the file, Amazon shows it as an online spreadsheet with errors before the upload. The preview works for up to 1,000 SKUs and only for rows with “Create or Replace”. The Listing Loader and the Price and Quantity template have no preview.

Does the end of flat file feeds in the SP-API affect uploads in Seller Central?

No. Amazon switched off the XML and flat file listings feeds in the SP-API. This affects software that sends listings automatically. The spreadsheet upload in Seller Central is still available.