Update the category, subcategory, and approval status for many products at once by editing a Kintsugi workbook and uploading it. Use this when your catalogue is too large to review product by product.

Time required: 10 to 20 minutes of your time, plus background processing for large catalogues

You will need:

• Access to the Products page in your Kintsugi organization

• A spreadsheet tool that can save an Excel workbook (.xlsx)

• A current Products export from Kintsugi, which you can request inside the upload drawer

Before You Start

Work from a fresh export. Kintsugi compares each row against your live product data, so a workbook exported days ago is more likely to produce conflicts if a connected platform has updated those products since.

Category and approval changes feed tax calculation. After you confirm, Kintsugi reprocesses the affected transactions that have not been filed yet, which can change your liability estimate. That is the point of the feature, and it is also why Kintsugi asks you to confirm before anything is applied.

Steps to Bulk Update Product Categories and Approval Status

Step 1. Access the Bulk Update Product Tool.

1. Log in to Kintsugi.

   

2. Select Products from the left navigation menu, .
   
   

3. In the Products page, select the button for Bulk Update Products.

   

4. The Bulk Update Categorization & Status side drawer opens.

Step 2. Export the Product Report

1. Click Export Products to get your list of products.

   

2. Kintsugi emails a download link to the email address on your account, usually within one to two minutes.

   

3. Open your email and hit Check Now to get your Product Report.

   

Step 3: Update the Category, Subcategory and Status.

1. Find the Products Report you downloaded and open it to get started.

2. Head to the next sheet tab and check the Product Codes sheet for your reference.
   This sheet lists every valid category, every valid subcategory, and a short description of each. Your category and subcategory values must come from this list.

   

3. On the Products Report sheet tab, update your product’s category and subcategory, then mark it as APPROVED to confir m accurate categorization.
   
   Capitalization does not matter, so apparel and Apparel are both accepted.
   Leave every other column untouched, and do not add, delete, or reorder rows

   

4. Save changes in your file.

Step 4: Upload the updated Products Report file.

1. Upload your file by either clicking Choose File or by dragging and dropping the file to the dropbox

   

2. The file will then appear on the drawer page.

   

3. Click Upload to proceed.

   

4. You’ll see the Bulk Update Products button loading—it won’t be clickable until your file finishes uploading and is ready to review.

   

Step 5: Review the product updates

1. You’ll see a notification at the top of the Products page with a See Details link—click it to review.

   

2. Review what will change.
   Kintsugi validates every row and opens Review Changes, which shows how many products will update, how many will be skipped (click the down arrow icon to show the reason behind each skip products), a before and after preview of the first 1,000 changed rows, and a downloadable list of skipped products.

   

3. Select Confirm. Kintsugi applies nothing until you confirm.

   

   If you would rather revise the workbook first, select Cancel and upload a corrected file.

4. Track progress on the Products page.
   A banner shows how many products have been processed out of the total, along with a percentage. You can keep working while it runs.

   

5. A confirmation message will appear on the bottom part of the page.

   

How to Confirm it Worked

The progress banner reaches completion and clears, then the Products list refreshes on its own.

Open a handful of the products you edited and check that the category, the subcategory, and the status match your Products Report file you updated and uploaded. The number of updated products should match the count shown on the Review Changes screen.

If some rows were skipped, download the skipped list from Review Changes, correct those rows, and upload the file again. Skipped rows are left exactly as they were, so nothing is lost.

Things to Know

• Only Category, Subcategory, and Status are editable. An edit to any other column invalidates that row, and the row is skipped.

• Status can only be set to APPROVED. You cannot un-approve a product or set any other status through the workbook.

• You cannot create a product by adding a row, and you cannot update an archived product.

• The upload accepts Excel workbooks (.xlsx) generated by the Kintsugi Products export. The worksheet names and column headers must be unchanged.

• Rows where all three editable values are unchanged are ignored. That is a normal outcome, not an error.

• If a product changed in Kintsugi after your export and you edit one of the three supported fields, that row is skipped as a conflict rather than overwritten.

• Changes applied this way are recorded as manual edits, so a later sync from a connected platform will not overwrite them.

• One invalid row never blocks the rest of the file. Valid rows continue.

• Bulk update does not affect transaction imports. Those remain a separate workflow.

• Bulk update is available on all Kintsugi plans.

FAQs

Q: Can I change product names, prices, or SKUs in the workbook?

A: No. Category, subcategory, and approval status are the only editable fields. Any other change causes the row to be skipped, and the product is left as it was.

Q: Do my changes apply as soon as I upload the file?

A: No. Uploading only validates the workbook. Kintsugi waits for you to select Confirm on the Review Changes screen before anything touches your product or tax data.

Q: How large a catalogue can I update at once?

A: Bulk update is built for large catalogues, including tens of thousands of rows. Larger files take longer to validate and to apply, and Kintsugi processes them in the background.

Q: Why does the preview show only some of my rows?

A: The before and after preview is capped at the first 1,000 changed rows to keep the screen responsive. Every valid row is still applied when you confirm, not only the previewed ones.

Q: What happens to the rows Kintsugi skipped?

A: They stay unchanged. Download the skipped list from Review Changes, fix the values, then upload the corrected workbook.

Need Help?

For further concerns, we're always here to help. If you can't find the answer you're looking for, just reach out to us using the chat in the bottom right corner of your screen.