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Understanding, Managing, and Fixing Errors
Understanding, Managing, and Fixing Errors

Learn how to use Zentail's error detection features in order to understand and resolve listing errors.

Ziggy avatar
Written by Ziggy
Updated over a week ago

Zentail provides several features such as Listing Status that allow for a better understanding of listing errors. To clear errors that might be affecting your catalogue's products, this article will detail how to locate errors as well as information on understanding and resolving these errors. 

The Errors Alert 

If a product has an error, you will see an Errors section in the left-hand sidebar when you have a SKU selected.

Clicking Errors will bring you to the list of errors affecting this SKU or group. We will get into this in more detail further down.


Understanding Errors

Now that you can see the listing errors, here are a few tips on understanding and solving them:

1. "Channel Errors" originate from marketplaces. "Validation Errors" are from Zentail.

For Channel Errors, an important point to keep in mind at all times: Zentail displays errors that originate from marketplaces. This means that many of the errors that you see in Zentail are errors that are returned by Amazon, Walmart, eBay, BigCommerce, or Shopify. Because these errors change over time its not always possible to automatically fix issues that arise, which is where you come in.

For Validation Errors, these are alerts and safeties that Zentail has in place to prevent failed listings, prompting you to fill out mandatory attributes like Title or Color that are always needed or the listing will be rejected by any channel.

2. Errors do not affect all marketplaces equally.

There are many different kinds of errors that a product can experience. Sometimes, there might be an error on Amazon, but not on Walmart. Or, a listing may be just fine on Walmart, but an error is being sent to Zentail from eBay.

3. You're not alone - errors happen.

If you see an error and are not sure how to solve the error, one quick way to find out is to Google search the error. We even do this here from time to time. Because errors are experienced by all sellers on Walmart, Amazon, or eBay, and not just Zentail sellers, chances are good that you will find a fellow seller online who has experienced and solved the same error. 


(NOTE: If you come across any documentation that we lack in this regard, please let us know and we'll gladly include it.)

4. The Zentail Error Library

To search common errors, visit help.zentail.com and search 'error' - our team at Zentail is dedicated to documenting resolutions for errors, and you will find many resolutions here. 

You may also download a report of errors for workflow purposes or to document errors externally. Here is a handy link to the download screen: https://app.zentail.com/integration/listing_errors


Types of Errors

Missing Attributes:

The most common type of listing error is where a required attribute (usually determined by the combination of Category and channel you're listing to) is not filled out:

These are extremely easy to resolve, in the above example you would simply need to edit this sku and fill out the Manufacturer field.


Invalid Attributes:

An invalid attribute error appears when you ARE sending a value to the specified field, but it is a value that the channel will not accept.

We try to parse attributes into values that channels will accept, so common things like Size being S or small or Small or SM will be detected and we will automatically send the channel an appropriate value. However if there is something unusual in that field that we cannot parse, it will have to be corrected manually.

If the correct value can not be determined, Zentail will not send a non-acceptable value to the channel, so you may also see a Missing Attribute error when the actual problem is that you have something un-parseable like "$m4LL" in the Size field instead of "Small."

Mismatched Attributes:

These are usually specific to Amazon. If you are attempting to list to a specified ASIN that you do not control, you will often need to make sure your product data matches what they have on file before they will publish your listing. These errors look like this:

In the above error, Amazon is indicating that the Product Type (Amazon's name for Categories) does not match. You will either need to set the Product Type to the value specified in the error, or often setting the category to a "higher" category in the organization will also work. In this example, SHIRT is the required Product Type but setting it to CLOTHING would work as well.


Brand Approval:

These are usually specific to Amazon. If you see an error related to Brand Approval or "Amazon must approve your brand before you can use it to list products":

You will likely not be able to resolve this in Zentail. You will need to follow the instructions in the error and contact Amazon Seller Support or you will need to use a different Brand value.

If you are interested in learning more about specific Amazon channel errors, please refer to our article on Common Amazon Errors and How to Resolve Them.

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