Catalog rules

As a connected operator, you can create catalog rules based on your product requirements. This feature validates the sellers’ products against these requirements before vetting (if enabled) or before the product goes online in the marketplace. You can also delete and edit catalog rules. In the Invalid ads export, the catalog errors are included.

The sellers can save the changes they made on the products and variants, but they cannot progress to operator vetting until the product and at least one published variant pass the catalog rules requirements.

Catalog rules ensure that:

• You only vet products that meet the requirements that you set, which reduces the vetting workload.
• The Sellers get feedback for the products that do not meet the rules set by the Operators.

For detailed instructions on creating catalog rules, see Create catalog rules. 

Elements of Catalog rules

Attributes

You can set catalog rules based on the product's attributes. These are the attributes you can select from:

Product

You can set requirements for each product attribute such as the number of characters it must have, the amount, what it must and must not contain, if the attribute is required, and other conditions.

To create a rule for a product attribute, navigate to ADVERTS > Catalog Rules > + Create new rule and select from these Product attributes:

• Product description
• Product image
• Product image filename
• Product image file format
• Product image height
• Product image width
• Product item tax rate
• Product price
• Product recommended retail price
• Product specifications
• Product title
• Product wholesale price

Variant

You can set requirements for each product attribute such as the number of characters it must have, the amount, what it must and must not contain, if the attribute is required, and other conditions.

To create a rule for a variant attribute, navigate to ADVERTS > Catalog Rules > + Create new rule and select from these Variant attributes:

• Variant barcode
• Variant count
• Variant errors metadata
• Variant image
• Variant image filename
• Variant image file format
• Variant image height
• Variant image width
• Variant item tax rate
• Variant price
• Variant recommended retail price
• Variant shipping parcel weight (the only available condition for this attribute is “present”)
• Variant shipping profile id
• Variant SKU
• Variant tax code
• Variant wholesale price

Condition

The selected condition specifies the requirement for the product’s attribute. These are the conditions you can select from. Please note that not all conditions are available for all attributes.

• greater than
• less than
• equal to
• not equal to
• greater than or equal to
• less than or equal to
• present
• start with 
• not start with 
• contain 
• not contain 
• contain at least one of 
• not contain html
• not contain exact word or phrase 
• unique* (available only for Variant SKU and barcode)

Example
If you choose "Variant barcode" as the attribute, you can set the condition to "equal to" and specify that sellers must provide a Variant barcode with exactly `<number>` characters.

If the Variant barcode is a required field, create an additional rule and select “present” as the condition to ensure that the Variant barcode is mandatory.

Value

The value specifies the required or allowed value for the selected attribute of the product.

The text-based conditions start with / not start with and contain / not contain conditions support multiple values (max 600 values per rule). When creating or editing a rule using these conditions, you can input multiple values by copying them from a spreadsheet or adding them manually as new rows.

For example, you want to create a catalog rule that requires sellers to write a product description that is greater than 300 characters. You can select:

• Attribute: Product description
• Condition: greater than
• Value: 300

The default error message based on the value you selected is “Product description must be greater than 300 characters”.