How to set up parent/child channels for Amazon

This article explains how to set up an Amazon channel in Channable to display product variants in a drop-down menu on Amazon and in your Amazon inventory.

If you’re selling both products with variants and products without variants, we strongly recommend you set up a separate (third) channel for the products without variants. You can follow our standard Amazon setup.

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Before you start

You'll need

• Valid EAN/GTINs for your products

• A Professional Amazon selling account (Required to sell on Amazon via channels)

• Permission from Amazon to sell a certain item or category

Good to know

• If all of your items have ASINs, you can send parent/child items from one channel instead of having to set up two. Follow our Amazon guide and set up an Offer only Amazon channel.

• Amazon processes data more slowly between 12:00–17:00 UTC. For best results, change your schedule settings to run your channel outside this window. Runs that take longer than 2 hours will auto-stop and need to be restarted.

• We refer to product identifiers as "IDs" and "Item group IDs". These correspond to "SKU" and "Parent SKU" in Amazon's terminology.

• Selling in multiple countries? You’ll need to create a parent and child channel for each country.

• If your product isn’t already in the Amazon catalog, you must create a new product listing to add it.

Step 1: Set up a Parent channel

The “Parent” product is the primary product to which child products (variations) belong. Follow the steps below to set up parent products.

1

Create your Parent channel

1. Go to Channels, click + Create channel and select Amazon V2.

2. Set up your channel settings:

   • For Name, choose a name for your channel (e.g. Parent UK).

   • For Unique ID per item, select the field to pull your product's group ID data (often item_group_id or parent_id). This will be used as the Seller SKU for the parent in Amazon.

   • For Amazon Country, select the country to advertise your listings.

   • For Listing requirement level, select Product only.

   • For Amazon error language, select the language you’d like to receive error messages in.

3. Click Continue.

2

Categorize your products

1. Go to the Categories step.

2. Categorize your items.

Important: AI Categorization can’t always categorize all of your products. If this happens, you’ll need to manually categorize remaining products.

3

Create rules

You need to group your items so only the parent products remain. To do this, your child products (variants of the main product) must include a field that ties them to the parent (e.g. item_group_id).

Note: If your import doesn't have a suitable field for grouping, you'll need to group your items yourself using a rule and create a new field to group them.

1. Go to the Rules step in your Parent channel.

2. Click the ‘+’ icon to create a new rule. Name it “Group items”. Define a rule that groups items by the item_group_id (take item_group_id and group items).

3. Click Save rule.

After this rule, you should have only one Parent item per group of variant products.

4

Map product attributes

1. In your parent Amazon channel, navigate to the Build step.

2. In the Shared attributes tab, make sure all fields are empty and unmapped. If a field is mapped, click Delete to remove it.

3. Click Save.

4. Go to the Attributes per category tab and select a category.

5. Scroll to the Variation theme section:

   • For Parentage level, select Static values and choose Parent.

   • For Variation Theme, click + Add, select Static values and select the theme for your variants (common choices: COLOR, SIZE, SIZE/COLOR).

6. If you set your Listing requirement level to Offer and Product in your channel settings, in the Offer section set Skip offer to the static value True (dropdown > Static values > True).

7. Fill in any remaining attributes marked as required by Amazon (mandatory attributes are shown in blue).

8. Click Save.

9. Repeat these steps for each category.

10. Go to the Quality step and review and resolve any items flagged with errors.

Step 2: Set up a child/variant channel

Child products are the variations (different color, size, etc.) of a parent product. Follow the steps below to set up your child products.

1

Create your child channel

1. Select + Create channel (or the appropriate option) and choose Amazon V2 for the child channel.

2. For Name, choose a channel name (e.g. Child UK).

3. For Unique ID per item, select the id field to pull your product's ID data (often id). This functions as the unique SKU for your variants.

4. For Amazon Country, select the country to advertise your listings.

5. For Listing requirement level, select Offer and product.

6. Click Continue.

2

Categorize your products

1. In your child channel, go to the Categories step.

2. Copy your categories from your Parent channel.

3

Create rules to enrich, filter, and refine product data

When your product data is incomplete or doesn’t match Amazon’s required format, you can use rules to improve it.

4

Map shared attributes

1. In your child channel, go to the Build step.

2. In the Shared attributes tab, map all mandatory fields to appropriate fields from your data.

3. In the Shipping section, map the Item Package Dimensions and Package Weight attributes.

4. To set up offers for all Amazon customers, map attributes in the Purchasable offer (Standard) section. Click + Add to view and map attributes related to Offer information and Discount price.

Note: If you use our Repricer, the repricer only reprices the Standard offer.

1. To set up exclusive offers for registered Amazon Business (B2B) accounts, map attributes in the Purchasable offer (Business price) section. Click + Add to view and map attributes related to offer information, and + Discount to add discount details.

2. Click Save.

5

Map category attributes

1. Go to the Attributes per category tab and select your category.

2. Scroll to the Variation theme section.

3. At Child Parent Sku Relationship, click + Add and set:

   • Child Relationship Type: Static values > Variation

   • Parent SKU: select item_group_id

   • Parentage level: Static values > Child

   • Variation Theme: + Add > Static values and choose the theme (COLOR, SIZE, SIZE/COLOR, etc.)

4. Click Save.

5. Repeat for each category.

6. Go to the Quality step and review and resolve items flagged with errors.

Important: The variation theme you choose determines which attributes you must fill for your variants (e.g., theme size requires filling size and possibly size_map if mandatory).

Note: Some attributes are mandatory by default according to Amazon documentation and may not make sense for your category. You can leave these fields empty when setting up your channel.

Step 3: Activate your parent/child channels and check for errors

1

Activate your channels

Amazon processes data more slowly between 12:00–17:00 UTC. For best results, change your schedule settings to run your channel outside this window. Runs that take longer than 2 hours will auto-stop and need to be restarted.

Steps:

1. Click Channel to return to your channel overview page.

2. Select the Settings step in your parent channel.

3. Click Activate API > Save.

4. Click X to return to your Channel overview page.

5. Click Run now to send your product listings to Amazon.

6. Once your parent channel has run, check your Amazon Seller account to see if your parent products are visible. If they’re not, follow our troubleshooting guide.

7. In Channable, click Channels and select the Settings step in the Edit column of your child channel.

8. Click Run now to send your child product listings to Amazon.

Your Amazon seller account should show the parent/variant setup once processed.

2

Review and fix listing errors

Amazon enforces strict data requirements. The Result step shows errors and warnings that prevent listings.

Steps to review and resolve:

1. Go to the Result step in your parent Amazon channel and open the Feedback tab. This lists current issues including errors and warnings.

2. Go to the Overview tab to see an overview of product listing status. Use the All dropdown to filter by:

   • Active listings: Products successfully listed on Amazon

   • Inactive listings: Products listed on Amazon, but not active

   • Incomplete listings: Products missing required information

   • No match found: Products not found in Amazon’s catalog

3. Return to the Feedback tab and resolve issues, starting with submission errors (resolving submission errors first can prevent them from affecting other listings).

   • Click the red error code in Description to see cause.

   • Note the attribute causing the error (e.g., Item Weight) and click Go to attribute to be redirected to the attribute.

   • Re-map the field(s) causing the issue by selecting a static field, a project data field, or entering a custom manual value.

   • Click Save.

4. Repeat for other errors.

5. Click Run now to resend your products to Amazon.

6. Repeat this whole step for your child Amazon channel.

Additional notes:

• Amazon needs time to process and list your products. Typically listings are live within 3 to 5 hours, depending on volume.

• You can perform a Dry run to see which listings would be live; resolve as many submission errors as possible before doing this.

Important: Some listing state errors are caused by older versions of the Amazon API (V1) and currently can’t be resolved with standard use of the API on the latest version (V2). Amazon is aware and is working on a fix. What you can do for now:

• Delete listings with the error by removing their SKUs from your channel.

• Wait 24 hours, then resubmit the listing.