Amazon flat file template: from a supplier spreadsheet to rows the Product Spreadsheet accepts

What the Amazon flat file template is

A supplier’s bedding file arrives with Hollinsby Home Textiles Ltd in the Brand column on one row and Hollinsby™ on the next, barcodes Excel shows as 5.01235E+12, and every size on a row of its own, inside a title typed in capitals. The Amazon flat file template takes none of that as it stands. The template is the spreadsheet Amazon gives sellers for listing in bulk, which its help calls a bulk listing template: “a spreadsheet that you use to create and update your products and offers on Amazon in bulk”.¹

Flat file is the older name, and it survives in Amazon’s own help: the page on error 8541 explains how to solve it “using flat files or APIs”.² The finished template goes back as an Excel .xlsx file, with no need to convert it to tab-delimited text, and bulk listing templates are “available for Professional selling plans only”.¹

One retirement causes confusion: the flat file listings feeds that applications sent through Amazon’s Feeds API stopped working on 31 July 2025, but Amazon said the change “does not impact any listings feeds submitted by sellers directly through Seller Central”.⁴³

So the work is not the upload. It is turning a supplier’s rows into rows the template accepts, which is one marketplace’s version of product data enrichment.

Which template, and how to get the right one

Which one a row needs depends on whether Amazon already has the product. Amazon matches each row’s product identifier (UPC, EAN, ISBN or ASIN) to an existing product page, and “If no match exists and you’re using the Product Spreadsheet, a new product page is created.”¹ A matched row joins a page other sellers write to as well, where “Your data may not be selected if another contribution is preferred.”⁵

The Product Spreadsheet is generated, not downloaded ready-made: “Amazon builds it based on the product types you select, so it includes only the attributes relevant to your catalog.”⁶ Amazon’s help puts it under Add Products, on the Spreadsheet tab, as Download Blank Template and then Download Product Spreadsheet, and one file holds up to 10,000 product rows.⁶ Select every product type the supplier’s range covers, because attributes are unique to each type.⁷

A template from a website or another seller’s account is therefore the wrong start. An incorrect template is one of the most common triggers of error 8560, and Amazon’s page on error 99001 says to use only templates “not older than 90 days”, with the version in cell B1.⁸⁹ Upload an older template version and Amazon offers a “converted template” to review, complete and resubmit; the old Category-specific and Book Loader templates are no longer accepted.¹¹⁰

Inside the template: tabs, colours and the columns that decide a row

A generated Product Spreadsheet is a workbook. You fill in the Template tab; the Data Definitions tab describes each column, the Valid Values tab lists the values Amazon accepts, and the Images and Instructions tabs explain the rest.¹¹⁹⁶¹² Once a product type is entered in column A, “all of the required attributes are highlighted in red cells”, and the header rows are not yours to edit: “Changes to headers will cause upload errors.”⁹⁵

Where supplier files break it

Each of these faults arrives in the supplier’s spreadsheet, and each has an error code.

Barcodes the spreadsheet has rewritten. Excel “automatically removes leading zeros, and converts large numbers to scientific notation”, which is how a 13-digit EAN comes to read 5.01235E+12 and a UPC that starts with 0 loses it.¹⁸ Amazon’s fix is to format the product ID column as text, and Microsoft adds that the format only affects numbers “entered after the format is applied”.⁵¹⁸ GTIN, EAN, UPC and MPN explained covers getting the digits back.

Barcodes that belong to something else. A supplier’s barcode can belong to the single item when you sell a pack, be a code the manufacturer has reused, or be registered to another brand. Amazon checks identifiers against the GS1 database, a pack needs the code for “that pack and item quantity”, and in clothing, Amazon notes, “barcodes are sometimes reused after three years”.¹⁵¹⁴²

A brand that is not the brand on the pack. Supplier brand columns can hold a company name, a trademark symbol or a description: Hollinsby Home Textiles Ltd, Hollinsby™, Hollinsby bedding. Amazon’s rule is that the brand value “must match the name of the brand on the product and not be a product type or product description”, and its guide to listing without a barcode calls “BrandName™” an incorrect format.¹⁷²¹ Where the product page already exists, a brand spelt differently from the catalogue’s returns error 8541, and if it is the same product, the fix is to match the catalogue’s “spacing, capitalisation, and singular or plural spelling”.² Normalising attribute values covers folding the spellings onto one.

Values the template does not hold. Where a column has a drop-down list, as Variation Theme and the product type do, only its values pass, and Amazon’s advice is plain: “do not copy paste any invalid value that is not a part of the drop-down list”.¹²⁹⁷ The lists move too, because Amazon “periodically revises values”.¹⁰

Gaps and lengths. A product type can ask for attributes the supplier file does not hold, and the red cells show which.⁹ Lengths are checked too, and the title limit is short: since 27 July 2026, titles in every category except media “will need to be 75 characters or less, including spaces”.²³²⁴ Writing product titles builds one from the row’s own columns.

Sizes and colours that will not join. The supplier gives each size its own row. Amazon wants a family, with one variation theme across the parent and children, and each child’s values for that theme filled in.²⁵ Every child must also share non-varying attributes such as the brand: “Child ASINs with different non-varying attribute values cannot be grouped into a single variation family.”²⁶ Three spellings of Hollinsby break the family as well as the brand.

Getting these right before the first upload matters more on Amazon than in your own store. Some attributes cannot change once a product page exists, the GTIN among them, and changing an identity attribute such as the brand is “against Amazon policy” except in exceptional circumstances, such as correcting a typo.² So a value that cannot be confirmed should be flagged, not guessed. We worked that way on a percussion and pro-audio retailer’s 901 products: 874 checked against a named source, and the 27 we could not check listed as unchecked, not filled in.

A supplier row before and after: one parent, four children

The range is a duvet cover set in two sizes and two colours: four supplier rows with nothing to tie them together, which become five on Amazon, a parent and four children. Here is the white king size in Amazon’s column names.

The parent’s title, Hollinsby 200 Thread Count Duvet Cover Set, leaves out size and colour, which Amazon wants only “in child ASINs and not in the title of the parent ASIN”.¹⁶ The parent takes no product ID, price or quantity, but still needs describing, “including an image that represents the generalized product”.¹² Choose the theme with care: once a product has been created with one, “you cannot change it”.²⁷ Variants: size and colour covers what counts as a variant at all.

Filling the template, step by step

1. Generate a fresh Product Spreadsheet for every product type in the supplier file, and use it within 90 days.⁷⁹
2. Map the supplier’s columns in a separate sheet, and paste values under the header rows, never over them.⁵
3. Format the product ID column as Text before any barcode goes in, then check each EAN has 13 digits and each UPC 12, with its own code for each pack size.⁵¹⁸¹⁴
4. Write one brand, exactly as it is on the product, or generic for an unbranded item.¹⁷¹⁶
5. Build each family first: the parent row, then a child per size and colour with the parent’s SKU, the same Variation Theme and its own values.¹²
6. Pick values from the drop-downs and fill every red cell.⁷²²
7. Keep titles to 75 characters, with size and colour on the children only.¹⁶
8. Give every row a main image link, the parent’s included, to a file at least 500 pixels on its longest side.⁶¹²²⁸
9. Upload the .xlsx, allow up to eight hours for a large file, and read the processing report. Record 1 in the report is row 3 of your file; filter error-type to separate errors from warnings, and resubmit only the corrected rows.¹

When it is not obvious

The product has no barcode. Most categories require one.¹⁵ Amazon’s route for a product without one is a product ID exemption, which it lists for private-label or handmade products, products you make, brand or publish without barcodes, bundles and generic unbranded goods, requested “separately for each store and category”; once one is approved, the template takes it as the product ID type, with the product ID left blank.²¹ It does not apply to a product with a GS1 barcode, and brands Amazon knows to have them “are not eligible”.²¹ If the supplier’s brand does use barcodes, Amazon says where to look: “on the purchase order or invoice from the manufacturer or distributor”.²⁹

The brand is new to Amazon. Error 5665 calls for a brand name approval application, with an image of the brand’s logo, and approval “applies across all countries”.²⁰ If instead you are not approved to create new pages for that brand, the code is 5461, and that approval is “granted at Amazon’s discretion”.²⁹ A file can carry the right brand but not the approval.

You would rather not use Amazon’s template. Amazon also takes a spreadsheet in your own format and uses AI “to transform the data in your file into draft listings”, so the checks above apply either way.³⁰

Where RefynData fits, and what to do next

Most of this work happens before the template is opened, and that part is what RefynData’s product data enrichment service does. Each SKU or barcode is matched to the real product, with a check that the source page shows that product; spelling variants are folded onto one value and measures converted to one unit; titles are written from values already in the data, to enforced length limits; and the full-size photo behind each thumbnail is found and every link checked. We prepare supplier spreadsheets for Amazon sellers and stop at the data: barcodes, brand, titles, sizes, weights, photos and values, each with its source, ready for the seller to put into the template.

Whichever way the file is prepared, generate a fresh template, fix the barcodes and the brand first, and lay out each range as a parent and its children. Upload one family before the whole range, and keep the column map for the supplier’s next delivery.