After the extension was installed, look under Catalog > Rocket Shopping Feeds in the store admin, to start setting up your feeds. (see Fig 1.3)

Fig 1.3 Rocket Shopping Feeds

Prepare your Merchant Account

If you don't already have an account, set up one: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188493

Once store is claimed and validated, we recommend the following:

1. Settings > SFTP and FTP  - create an FTP account within the Merchant Center, generate a password and keep it safe as we will need it later. (see Fig 1.4)
2. Settings > AdWords - link the merchant center to your AdWords account.
3. Settings > Tax - set the tax rules similar to your magento tax zones.

Fig 1.4 SFTP and FTP settings

The basic product campaign is to bid the same way for all your products, but you can improve your ads by bidding differently on groups of products. 

Edit your campaign in AdWords, and go to Product Groups and click the "+" sign to find out how you can group them. Those groups can be defined using the following columns in the feed:

• Category - is the google_product_category column in the feed and also the main way to organize your products into groups. It is filled with google taxonomies that should have been set as part of Set up Google Shopping
• Brand - is your brand column in the feed, mapped by default to manufacturer attribute on your products.
• Item Id - is your item_id column from the feed and should be mapped by default to your product ID from magento. 
• Condition - is the condition columns from the feed, by default all products having value "new". If you want to change that, create a new attribute on your products, set the accepted values on your products and map it under Columns Map.
• Product type - is the product_type column in the feed, and should correspond to magento categories. That is if, product_type is mapped to Product Type by Category directive in the Columns Map.
• Custom label 0-4 - should correspond to columns in the feed custom_label_0 to custom_label_4, and allow you to specify custom data on which you can group products. Those columns are not mapped by default in your feed, so you will need to add them.

If you want to group your products for use in a Shopping campaign, you'll need to setup custom labels in your feed. 

Google requirements

You can create up to five custom labels, numbered 0 through 4, for each item in your feed. You may submit one value per item for each custom label attribute. You should assign a specific definition for each of the five custom labels and specify the possible values for each. Then, you use these custom labels consistently across the products in your Merchant Center account, assigning appropriate values to each product according to your definition. Each of the five custom labels can have only one value per product.

Source: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188494?hl=en

Limitations

• You can only have 5 custom labels
• one product can have only one value per label, so in total, a product can only have 5 labels
• and you cannot group more than 1,000 products with the same labels.

As custom labels are meant to allow grouping of items, only 1,000 unique values are supported for each custom label attribute across the items in your account. Products with a custom label submitted after the limit was exceeded won’t be included in product groups using this custom label. To correct the issue, update your product data to reduce the number of unique values for the custom label to less than 1,000.

Source: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188494?hl=en

Setting up Price Buckets

Price buckets is a concept to help target campaign bids by product price ranges. I.e. products with price intervals:

• < $50
• $50 - $100
• $100 - $500
• > $500

To set them up, you would need to define a set of rules under Adwords Price Buckets feed setting and insert a new custom_label_0 column and map it to the Adwords Price Buckets directive in the feed Columns Map.

Pre-requirements

Setting up inventory feed requires a Google Shopping feed to be configured and submitted to google. Check the Set up Google Shopping page to set up one. 

Similar to Google Shopping, Inventory feeds are recommended to be submitted through FTP Uploads, so if you haven't done it already, configure an FTP account in your merchnat account

1. Clone your Google Shopping feed, and edit the Columns Map and delete all comlumns but: id, price, availability, sale_price, sale_price_effective_date
2. Update the schedule to generate the file around 3 times per day, or each 6 hours.

For example if your products feed is schedule at 1AM, the inventory update should happen at 7AM, 1PM and 7PM. (see Fig 1.22)

Fig 1.22 Update schedule

1. Register the feed with Merchant Center

   Navigate to Feeds under merchant center and select + FEED button, than follow the steps to register it:
   Mode = Test, 
   Feed type = Online Product Inventory Update
   Target country - should math the one set for google shopping feed.
   Feed name - can be anything, but for consistency, name it the same way as you did in magento. (see Fig 1.23)

2. Generate the feed

   Click the Run Now button in the feed feed management screen, and wait for the feed to complete. This will generate the feed file and also upload it to your merhcnat ceneter.

   Feed will process daily, so at this step you may also adjust the Run Schedule if you need to. Check our guide on Generating the feed for more details.

3. Analyze results

   Once the feed has completed, go into the merchnat center and select the feed you just registered.  

   Check the number of item processed and see if there are any errors with processing. If there are errors, follow ourTesting and Troubleshooting section to help solve them.

    

   Once you clear errors, register the feed live by redoing the step 1. only this time Mode = Live, and use the same feed_<id>.txt file as used for the test one.

Fig 1.23 Register feed with Merchant Center

Prepare your Merchant Account

In order to submit promotion feeds to google shopping, you'll have to apply for program participation, use this form to request it.

Fig. 2.1. Special offer Ad

For most of the countries, value added tax needs to be included in the price. This is needed on product pages as well as in the price field in the feed. Exception to this rule applies to US, Canada and India stores. 

To see the up to date list of restrictions please read google's Tax Policy.

Benefits

If you update prices during the day, regularly hold promotions and special offers, or have low-stock items that sell fast, then microdata will help you:

• keep prices, availability and condition fresh in Google
• validate your products in Google's strict pricing consistency rules
• improve user experience, traffic to your product listings, and higher conversion rates because users already see the correct price on Google Shopping

In contrast, if you choose not to enable automatic item updates in your account, items with mismatched price and availability will be temporarily disapproved rather than updated.

Prerequisite

You'll need to have price and availability columns in the feed, these are enabled and set up by default.

Step-by-step guide

1. Activate Microdata item updates from System > Configuration > .Rocket Shopping Feeds > General (see Fig 1.20)

Fig 1.20 Activate Microdata item updates

1. Activate Microdata item updates from System > Configuration > .Rocket Shopping Feeds > General

2. Enable automatic item updates in Google Merchant. (see Fig. 1.21)

• Go to "Settings" in the left-hand menu, then "Automatic item updates"
• Click "Edit Settings"
• Check "Enable automatic item updates"
• Select "Price and Availability" and check "Also update items that are 'in stock' on my website but 'out of stock' on Shopping."
• Click Save changes

Fig 1.21 Enable automatic updates

[missing screenshot: microdata_setup_merchant.png]

Troubleshooting

Google provides a handy tool to see what microdata is enabled on your product pages. 
Just paste the URL to a Product Page and you should see all the items on that page with their respective price and stock status.

→ http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Microdata missing?

You should first verify that this particular product is included in the feed.

• if the product is not in the feed, then microdata may not appear correctly
• if the product is missing Stock and Price columns in the feed, then microdata will be missing them as well 
• and that all caches are cleared - you'll need to see a fresh Product Page for the new info to work. So a full clear of Full Page Cache / Block Cache / 3rd party Varnish caches will be needed before your product pages will contain microdata. The "Flush Cache Storage" button will clear all caches in a default Magento installation

Feed Columns allows you to map any column to any product attributes, or to directives implementing special logic meant to follow marketplace specifications.

Product URL

Processes product urls so that they match the type of product and listing in the feed. Set the additional parameter Add URL Suffix to further customize the end of a product URL with custom string.

The suffix can be used to track referring URLs in web analytics software. Setting this to ?utm_source=google_shopping will generate links like: http://mystore.com/product-url.html?utm_source=google_shopping. Products without assigned categories will not use the SEO friendly version of the URL.

Configurable associated products can append to this URL parameters to target their specific variant, see Unique urls for associated products not visible setting under Configurable Products section of the feed config. (see Fig 4.8)

Fig 4.8 Product URL

[missing screenshot: d_product_url.png]

Product Image URL

Simply pulls the product's main image URL. Allows the option to set under the Type parameter, which images is the main image, by default it's set to Base Image.

If your product does not have an image assigned as the Base Image, your product may be skipped if "image_link" is under "Skip product with empty". If you notice problems, try removing it from skip rule. (see Fig 4.9)

Fig 4.9 Product Image URL

[missing screenshot: d_image_url.png]

Product Category Image URL

Returns category image of the first category assignment found for your product. This should only be used for special cases where product images are defined on the category level. (see Fig 5.0)

Fig 5.0 Product Category Image URL

[missing screenshot: d_category_image.png] 

Toybanana External Image URL

Returns the value of product's "image_external_url", which comes packed with Toybanana_ExtImages extension. If you do not have the extension, you can simply create the image attribute and fill in the data for products. (see Fig 5.1)

Fig 5.1 Toybanana External Image URL

[missing screenshot: d_toybanana.png]

Product Additional Images URLs

This directive outputs a comma separated list of active image URLs for the product. Under the Exclude Type parameter should be set to the main image of the product, so that only the rest of images are added through this directive. (see Fig 5.2)

Fig 5.2 Product Additional Images URLs

[missing screenshot: d_additional_images.png]

Product Image URL 360_Magic

This directive outputs the main image managed by MagicToolbox_Magic360 extension. Under the Main Image no (0001) parameter can be specified which number of the image is the main image used with that extension. (see fig 5.3)

Fig 5.3 Product Image URL 360_Magic

[missing screenshot: 360_image.png]

Product Additional Image URL 360_Magic

This directive outputs other images managed by MagicToolbox_Magic360 extension, up to 10 images in a comma separated value. Under the Main Image no (0001) parameter can be specified which number of the image is the main image used with that extension so it can be excluded from the list. (see Fig 5.4)

Fig 5.4 Product Additional Image URL 360_Magic

[missing screenshot: 360_alternate_image.png]

Price

The price directive aims to match the price displayed on the product page, so it takes into account currency conversions, tax, promotions, MSRP and eco tax. Configurable, bundle and grouped items will have the minimal price of an item. Setting Add Tax option below to Yes will add tax to this price column, for US all prices should not include tax, the appropriate setting should be made here. The price output includes the currency information.

Msrp price is used in this directive when the product has msrp enabled and that value is bigger than the price itself, forcing Sale Price directive to display the regular price.

For products that have qty increments active, it will multiply the amount with the minimum number of items to purchase. (see Fig 5.5)

Fig 5.5 Price

[missing screenshot: d_price.png]

Sale Price

This directive will output the lowest value for which the product can be purchased at. It computes the Special Price of the product, and any catalog promotion rules according to the Apply Catalog Price Rules setting from  General Configuration section. Setting Add Tax option below to Yes will add tax to this price column, for US all prices should not include tax, the appropriate setting should be made here.

When Msrp is enabled, the value of regular price is used here if there are no running promotions at a lower value. Similar to Price directive it takes into account the qty_increments set for the product. (see fig 5.6)

Fig 5.6 Sale Price

[missing screenshot: d_special_proce.png]

Sale Price Date Range

The date interval is taken primarily from the product's Start / End dates of the special price. This interval will never output empty, so when no end date is specified for the product, the range will be set for a full year. If the start date is not specified on the product, the current processing date is  considered. 

This date range is mostly useful in the feed along with the Sale Price, specifying when this sale apply. (see Fig 5.7)

Fig 5.7 Sale Price Date Range

[missing screenshot: d_sale_date_range.png]

Availability

Uses regular magento stock information to compute whether a product is on stock or not. When the additional setting Use default Stock Statuses is set to No, a custom attribute specified under Alternate Stock/AvailabilityAttribute, will be used to specify the availability. See more settings under General Configuration section.

Accepted values for this directive are: 'in stock', 'out of stock', and 'preorder'. Other values will be replaced by 'out of stock'. (see Fig 5.8)

Fig 5.8 Availability

[missing screenshot: d_availability.png]

Inventory Count

Simply pulls the stock inventory qty information. The Count Mode defines how the qty count should be performed in case of complex products like bundle. (see Fig 5.9)

Fig 5.9 Inventory Count

[missing screenshot: d_inverntory.png]

Product Expiration in Feed

Computes an expiration date based on product creation and the "No. of Days" option below. Set "No. of Days" option to increase or decrease this date limit. (see Fig 6.0)

Fig 6.0 product Expiration in Feed

[missing screenshot: d_expiration.png]

Shipping

This directive computes shipping information into accepted format, based on the shipping methods available for your products. To use this directive, Shipping section has to be  configured on your feed. To specify which Shipping Methods and which regions will be considered please review Shipping section. (see Fig 6.1)

Fig 6.1 Shipping

[missing screenshot: d_shipping.png]

Shipping Weight

Outputs the weight attribute of your products along with the unit of measure specified here under options. For bundle products, there's an extra setting called Combined weight found under the Bundle Products section. (see fig 6.2)

Fig 6.2 Shipping Weight

[missing screenshot: d_weight.png]

Variant Attributes (Apparels)

Allows for using multiple product attributes to specify a different value systems for the same property. It comes handy to map apparel specific properties. 

Example of size property: 

• shirts - shirt_size attribute, with values: Small, Large, X-Large, etc
• shoes - shoe_size attribute, with values: 8, 9, 10, etc

Using this directive you can select both attributes, and when processing the product, the appropriate value will be considered depending on whether a value is specified in one of the attributes. First attribute found having a value for the product is been used.

For configurable items, all values will be computed into a list of values delimited by comma, or a delimiter specified under Associated Product Attribute Value Separator setting under Configurable products section of the config. (see Fig 6.3)

Fig 6.3 variant Attributes (Apparels)

[missing screenshot: d_variant.png]

Product Options

This directive is used to output values of product custom options. This directive is used for apparel catalogs which hold the color and size variations as custom options instead of having those properties as configurable products items. It takes as argument the list of custom options names which should hold the values needed for the column you're setting up. 

Each custom option in the argument has the number of products affected in the right (x).  (see Fig 6.4)

The output of this directive also depends on how the Product Options section is configured, and it can be a list of possible values as comma separated, or it can be a single value in case the products is set to detail each options combination as separate row in the feed. 

Fig 6.4 Product options

Adwords Price Buckets

This directive uses a set of rules defined under Adwords Price Buckets settings to output labels for different price ranges of your products. 

A common usage is to add the google custom_label_0 column which is handy to group your products when running AdWords Shopping Campaigns. (see Fig 6.5)

Fig 6.5 Adwords Price buckets

[missing screenshot: d_buckets.png]

To specify the upper limit of your prices, just use some big number like 99999999. See below example image.

Fig 6.6 Adwords Price buckets

[missing screenshot: d_buckets_1.png]

Product Review Average

Output product's average rating in the interval 1 - 5. Returns 0 if no reviews have been approved on your product. (see Fig 6.7)

Fig 6.7 Product review Average

[missing screenshot: d_review_average.png]

Product Review Count

Outputs the count of product reviews. Returns 0 if no reviews have been approved on your product. (see Fig 6.8)

Fig 6.8 Product Review Count

[missing screenshot: d_review_count.png]

Product Type using Magento Category Path

This method is the default way of filling a categorised column of your products that can be used to fill product_type. 

Your product category paths are converted into a string revealing the hierarchy like: Root > Categ A > Categ B. Product been assigned to Categ B. All product categories will be used to build a list of comma separated paths, and they are limited to the Paths limit value.

Categories are matched in order of priorities defined under category Map, if no priority values are defined, it will just match them the order found in the database. (see Fig 6.9)

Fig 6.9 Product Type using Magento Category Path

 Uses a set of rules defined under the Map Taxonomy by Categories setting to output category taxonomies. (see Fig 7.0)

Fig 7.0 Map Taxonomy by Categories

Products will be matched through the set of rules using their assigned categories. The first category found with the most important category rules below will be considered. The rule importance is given by the Order rule column, lower values matching first.

Product categories do not necessarily need to have a direct correspondent rule to cover products deeper in the tree.  High level categories set here would dictate inheritance for products deeper in the category tree. (see Fig 7.1)

Fig 7.1 Map Product Categories to Taxonomy

The more categories defied here, the granular your taxonomy definition becomes giving google a better and detailed view of your products. 

It is advise to also set a Replace empty values rule to cover all missed categories from this set, and fill the values with a static default taxonomy or some product attribute holding the taxonomy. 

Identifier Exists

This directive looks at your feed identification columns and checks for values. Default identification columns are: brand, mpn, gtin, and returns FALSE if brand or any of the mpn or gtin is missing, returns nothing otherwise. You you choose to customize the identification columns as a parameter, it will return FALSE if one of the columns is missing, otherwise returns nothing. (see Fig 7.2)

Fig 7.2 Identifier Exists

Concatenate

Allows you to compose a string using attributes of your products or other column values. (see Fig 7.3)

Fig 7.3 Concatenate

[missing screenshot: d_concatenate.png]

Use product attributes in this format: {{attribute_code}}. Attribute codes available for your products can be looked up under Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes. To use other column output in concatenation use the same format: {{column_name}}, and make sure the column is defined in the column map, and it is not mapped to another concatenation directive.

 This method works like a replace in string function, and looks for the {{}} marker through the string template to replace it with the attribute or column value as specified.

The following placeholders will inherit values as defined in the 'Fetch ... from' settings from Configurable Products and Grouped Products configuration sections:

• {{name}}
• {{description}}
• {{url}}
• {{image}}

If all placeholders bring an empty value when computed, the column output itself will be empty. For example if the template is:

Concatenate of {{name}} and {{size}}

and {{name}} and {{size}} values in product are empty, the Directive will return empty string. Those values can be caught using Product Filters - Replace.

 Is Bundle

Outputs TRUE if the item is a bundle item and FALSE otherwise. (see Fig 7.4)

Fig 7.4 Is Bundle

[missing screenshot: is_bundle.png]

Map Product Categories to Taxonomy

Taxonomies defined here output using the Taxonomy By Category directive in the Columns Map.

Use the checkboxes and deselect categories you do not want to include in the feed. Use the input reading "Type at least 3 characters" to fill in taxonomies using an autocomplete list. (see Fig 7.6)

Fig 7.6 Map Product Categories to Taxonomy

Use the arrows to expand the category tree, and try to find deeper taxonomy path for each category. 

Allow Out of Stock

This filter is applied to standalone simple products or configurable products. Associated simple products have other rules defined in "Configurable products" and "Grouped products"

 Submit only products of these types

 You can specify by store what types of products should be included in the feed.

 Adding configurable or bundle types will actually pull also associated simple products if it's specified in the Configurable products or Apparel sections. Custom product types like AheadWorks subscription types will do fine.

Submit only products that have these attribute sets

If you want to include All Attribute Sets, you can select only the first option; selecting the first option along with a few other sets won't include all sets.

Adwords Price Buckets

This section allows you to define a set of rules to label your products based on price intervals, which will be mapped using Adwords price Buckets directive.

To specify the upper limit of your prices, just use some big number like 99999999. See below example image. (see Fig 8.0)

Fig 8.0 Adwords Price Buckets

[missing screenshot: d_buckets_1.png]

A common usage is to add a custom_label_0 column which is handy for running campaigns. (see Fig 8.1)

Fig 8.1 Adding a new column

 How to add associated products (see Fig 8.5)

This option specifies how configurable associated items will be processed. It has three options:

• Only parent / No associated products
• No parent product / Only associated products
• Both types - parent product and associated products

The recommended option for a google shopping feed is to use the option No parent product / Only associated products, which would list all associated items of the products but miss the configurable itself. 

Fig 8.5 Configurable Products Tab

Unique URLs for associated products not visible 

When associated products are not visible in catalog on their own, they are accessed through the configurable item URL, making it hard to tell which products we're targeting. Activating this option will append extra parameters to the URL, making it unique. 

Ex: http://example.com/configuable.html?color=123&size=99

When accessing this kind of URL, there's a special JavaScript logic on products page automatically selecting drop-downs or radio buttons to reveal the intended product details: image, price, etc.

How to add associated products (see Fig 8.6)

This option specifies how items of grouped products will be processed. It has three options:

• Only parent / No sub-items
• No parent product / Only sub-items
• Both types - parent and sub-items

Fig 8.6 Grouped Products Tab

Fetch title from (see Fig 8.6)

Tells where to grab product name of associated items when they are included in the feed. Has the following options:

• Parent only
• Associated only 
• Associated if exists, otherwise from parent
• Parent if exists, otherwise from associated

The recommended option Associated if exists, otherwise from parent should cover most cases of grouped product setup.

Fetch description from (see Fig 8.6)

Tells where to grab description of associated items when they are included in the feed. Same options and conditions apply as for the Fetch title from setting.

Fetch URL from

This allows you to dictate which URL to present to associated item, depending on it's status in the catalog. Has the following options:

• Parent only
• Associated if visible in catalog, otherwise from parent

In most cases grabbing the parent URL is enough, but when the associated items are also visible in catalog on their own, it's probably best to use their own URL so that the appropriate product information is displayed on the page when accessed.

Fetch image from (See Fig 8.6)

Tells what images should be used when associated items are included in the feed. 

Has the following options:

• Parent only
• Associated only 
• Associated if exists, otherwise from parent
• Parent if exists, otherwise from associated

Most of the times the images are set directly to the grouped item itself, but sometimes when you want to feature out some variant characteristics, you would set individual images on the sub-items.

Unique URLs for associated products not visible (See Fig 8.6)

Activating this option will append extra parameters to the URL, making it unique and indicating the product we want to point out.

Ex: http://example.com/grouped.html?prod_id=123

When accessing this kind of URL, there's a special JavaScript logic on product page automatically, selecting drop-downs or radio buttons to reveal the intended product details: image, price, etc.

Combine weight (see Fig 8.7)

Bundle items can be defined as Dynamic or Fixed weight. This feature overwrites the bundle definition and goes for Dynamic weight by computing weight as sum of all sub-items.

The options here help on constructing the output format required by marketplace provider.

Methods (see Fig 8.8)

Lets you choose which of the shipping methods you would want to apply on your products in the feed. Only table rates and static shipping methods are available for use here.

Fig 8.8 Shipping Tab

Once the next cron runs (5 min), the feeds will start processing one by one, showing their progress with a percentage status. I.e. 10%, and under the Feed File, information about how many products where processed is displayed along with a link to download the feed file.

When the feed completes processing, the status will display COMPLETED. 

If there where errors in processing the feed, status will display ERROR, and a detailed messages list about the errors can be found by clicking View Logs.

Check Testing and Troubleshooting for more information on how to solve issues. 

In the feeds management screen look for the Test feed button on a feed row. A similar button is found in the feed configuration screen. (see Fig 3.9)

Fig 3.9 Test feed button

Using the Test Feed button, a dialogue will open, asking you to input the product's SKU or ID. Fill in the SKU and hit the Test Feed Now (see Fig 4.0)

Fig 4.0 Test feed dialog

The feed output will be displayed in a table where each row will represent a feed column and the value for the tested product.

If the value of the product for a column is not what you were expecting, check the following:

• You are using a correct attribute / directive in Columns Map.
• You are not using Product Filters the wrong way.
• The Product has the correct data saved.

At the bottom of the product output there's also a snippet of the logs generated for this product, there will be logged any skipped products in case of complex products like configurable, bundle, etc. (see Fig 4.1)

Fig 4.1 Feed output

In the feeds management screen, click on View Logs link for feed. This will open a new window where you can see logs of today's processing.

If you need to see previous process logs you'll have to download the full log, use the Download Log button.

For a clean test, you should use the Clear Log button before processing the feed. This way only entries from last processing will be shown. (see Fig 4.2)

Fig 4.2 Feed log

How to read logs lines

• Each log line starts with date & time, and they are ordered chronologically.
  
  
• Batch ID XXX, acquired lock. Offset 0, Limit 50 
  Your feed is being processed in batch mode (in packs of products, 50 products per generation, from given offset)
  
  
• product id 399 product sku hde012, skipped - REASON 
  The product is skipped because one of the product rules/limitations. Check Product Filters {{Skip Products with empty}} section
  
  
• Items: 88 added, 0 skipped | in file /path/to/magento/root/media/feeds/feed_ID.txt 
  The info line which gives you information about how many products were added/skipped.

Store View

Product information may vary by store view, and setting the store view here will make the feed to pull product information in corresponding store context. 

If you have multiple stores targeting different countries and languages, you may want to create a feed for each of those stores. 
When you change the store view, Feed Currency should be set to the default displayed currency for that store. (see Fig 4.3)

Feed Currency

Allows you to choose which of the allowed currencies should be used when calculating prices. If Feed Currency is different from the Display Currency of that store, prices will be converted to the appropriate currency. 

We recommend setting the Feed currency to match the display currency, so the feed and the product pages will display the same price.(see Fig 4.3)

Feed Path

"Feed path" is relative to the web root like: [magento_root]/media/feeds/ but you can set an alternate save path. Make sure the feed path has enough write permissions for both web server’s user and cron user if they are different. Ask your web hosting company for help if needed.

File will have the following file name format: feed_[id].txt and it will be displayed in the feed grid once the file is generated. (see Fig 4.3)

Apply Catalog Price Rules

Whether to include Magento catalog rules when computing prices on products. This has direct influence on how the Sale Price is being computed, in addition to product Special Price attribute, when this option is set to yes, promotions will affect whether Sale Price gets populated or not. (see Fig 4.3)

Use default Stock Statuses

By default, it is set to yes, using regular Magento stock information to compute whether a product is out of stock or in stock. When it is set to No, it will allow you to specify a custom attribute which has to hold valid values for stock status, this can be found under Alternate Stock/Availability Attribute  setting.

The attribute's values can be: 'in stock', 'out of stock' and 'preorder'. Other values will be replaced by 'out of stock'. (see Fig 4.3)

Max Length of Title and Description

Title and Description max length for the products are limited in Google Data to 70 and respectively 1000 characters. Those settings allow you to change the values if needed. (see Fig 4.3)

Fig 4.3 General Configuration

If you use configurable products and have different pricing for each option, then you might want to set prices on the Simple products associated with your configurables.

By default, Magento will use the price you set on the configurable product, for all pricing: normal, special price, tier price etc. If you want to set different prices for more expensive product options, you have to go to the "Associated Products" tab of the configurable product, and set extra pricing for the options, that will get added to the configurable price - see more details in the Magento documentation.

Supported extensions

To use this feature, your store needs to have one of the following extensions:

1. SCP

2. Simple Product Pricing

Step-by-step guide

The default Magento setup described above may prove tedious if you have many different prices. Instead, you can choose to disregard the price of the configurable product, and use "price" and "special price" from the simple children.

1. You need to install one of these two extensions:
   1. SCP http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/simple-configurable-products.html

   2. Simple Product Pricing http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/simple-product-pricing.html
      
      

      Installing these extensions will affect your live site - all prices for configurable products in catalog and checkout will be changed to use prices set on the simple children only!

      
      
      

2. All configurable pricing in the website and shopping feed will now be meaningless; you need to set price (and special price if needed) on each simple product
3. You don't need to configure anything else; just re-generate the feed and the new pricing will be in place
   1. simple children will have their own separate prices
   2. if you include the configurable in the feed, it will have the minimum price from its children, but it's own special price

Prepare your store in Bing Merchant Center

If you don't already have an Bing Ads account, set up one: https://bingads.microsoft.com/customer/Signup.aspx

Setup a store by logging into your Bing Ads account and going to Tools > Bing Merchant Center > Create store.

After you are done creating your store we suggest you configure the store's FTP settings:

1. Bing Merchant Center > Select store > FTP Settings tab - create an FTP account within the Merchant Center and take of the server address, user name and password as we will need it later. (see Fig 3.1)

Fig 3.1 SFTP and FTP settings

1. Follow the steps on adding a feed section and use Bing Catalog under Feed Type.
   
   

2. Set the target Store View. 

   If you have different store views for each target country, you may want to create a feed for each of those stores. 

   When you change the store view, Feed Currency should be set on the default displayed currency for that store. (see Fig 3.2)

Fig 3.2 Store view

For the U.S., do not include tax in the price. For the U.K., the prices submitted in the catalog feed must not include any value added tax (VAT). Item prices (the price field) for all other countries provided in the catalog feed must include applicable taxes.

For most of the countries, value added tax needs to be included in the price. This is needed on product pages as well as in the price field in the feed. Exception to this rule applies to US, Canada and India stores. 

1. Generate the feed
   Click the Run Now button in the feed feed management screen, and wait for the feed to complete. This will generate the feed file and also upload it to your Merchant Center. (see Fig 4.2)
   Once the feed file has completed, download the file from feeds management screen, than compress the file to zip or gz as a preparation for feed activation.

2. Upload the feed file to Merchnat Center
   Login to ShareAsale merchant account, navigate to My Creatives > Datafeed > Product Management Center > UPLOAD A NEW DATAFEED. (see Fig 4.3).
   Use the upload form to send the first feed file to ShareASale.

Fig. 4.2 Generate File

Fig. 4.3 Upload File

3. Set FTP uploads

Once the first feed file is uploaded to merchnat center, you may request FTP account details for uploading the file automatically each day. 
Use the Submit Ticket button at the bottom of your merchnat center, or email share a sale support. (See Fig. 4.4). 

We have uploaded our fist datafeed, and we would like to 
receive instructions on uploading the file via FTP. Our 
server IP address uploading the file is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

Ask your store hosting provider what the server IP is, and use it instead of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx when sending the request. Once you get the FTP account details, go ahead and fill them in in your feed configuration under FTP Uploads tab (See Fig. 4.5). 

Feed will generate and upload a file update each day, so at this step you may also adjust the Run Schedule if you need to. Check our guide on Generating the feed for more details.

Fig. 4.4 Requesting FTP details

Fig. 4.5 FTP automatic upload account