ChannelEngine: freeze products

About this article

This article describes ChannelEngine’s freeze products feature, how to enable it, and how to use it.

Table of contents

Introduction

Freeze products via the web interface

Unfreeze products via the web interface

Freeze products via the Merchant API

FAQs

Introduction

The freeze products feature allows you to temporarily set a product's stock quantity to zero, making it unavailable for sale on all connected channels. Freezing products allows a window for investigation and troubleshooting, without having to remove the products from your product selection.

Common use cases for freezing products include:

• The product's stock has been lost or damaged.
• The product's stock or price is displayed incorrectly on one or more marketplaces.

Once the underlying issue is resolved, unfreeze the products. The unfreeze action reinstates the product's stock to the quantity specified on ChannelEngine and resumes sales on the connected channels.

The freeze products feature is available at Products, Products.

Freeze products via the web interface

To freeze products via ChannelEngine's web interface:

1. Go to Products, Products.
2. To freeze all products on the page, click + Select all in the top-right corner. Navigate between pages and continue selecting more products, if needed.

3. Alternatively, to select specific products to freeze, click + Select under each product. 

   NB: steps 2 and 3 are specific to the grid view of the Products page. If you use the list view, select the checkboxes on the left. Use the top checkbox to select all products on the page.

4. Click the Actions menu in the top-right corner and then click Freeze products.

   

5. In the Freeze products popup, specify the reason for freezing the products. E.g.: the product's stock is displayed incorrectly, causing overselling issues.
6. Click Freeze products. Wait between 30 and 60 minutes for the product's stock to be updated, as different marketplaces have different schedules for offer updates.

The frozen product has an snowflake icon in the top-right corner.

Unfreeze products via the web interface

Once you have addressed the stock or pricing issue, unfreeze the product and make it available for sale.

1. Go to Products, Products.
2. To view frozen products, toggle the Frozen products switch under Additional filters. 
   
3. To unfreeze all products on the page, click + Select all in the top-right corner. 
4. Alternatively, to select specific products to unfreeze, click + Select under each product. 
5. Click the Actions menu in the top-right corner and then click Unfreeze products.
6. Indicate the reason for unfreezing the products. E.g.: the issue with the missing stock has been resolved.
7. Click Unfreeze.

Alternatively, freeze/unfreeze a product from its Product details page. In the Listed channels and mappings widget on the right, use the Freeze product or Unfreeze product buttons respectively. To view the freeze and unfreeze history of a product, along with the related comments, click Freeze history.

Freeze products via the Merchant API

To freeze or unfreeze a product via ChannelEngine's Merchant API, send a request to the POST /v2/products/freeze endpoint and add the required product details:

• Merchant product number - the identifier that makes your product unique on ChannelEngine. 
• Reason - the reason for temporarily disabling the product, or for making it available again.
• Action - the action performed on the product. I.e.: freeze or unfreeze.

You can retrieve the state of your products by sending a request to the GET /v2/products endpoint. If the IsFrozen property is set to true, then the product is temporarily disabled.

FAQs

What happens if I freeze the stock of a product that is affected by other stock-related settings?

When the freeze products feature is enabled, it takes precedence over other stock-related features, such as Stock limit or Stock buffer. All existing stock configurations are ignored – and the stock is automatically set to 0 (zero) across all connected marketplaces.

Can I freeze a product bundle?

Yes. A product bundle is a sellable product. You can freeze it to set its stock to zero and make it unavailable for sale across all channels.

Importantly, because a bundle is a composition of products, its availability is inherently linked to its parts. If an individual product within a bundle is frozen, the bundle that contains it will also be effectively frozen.

What happens if I freeze a product that is fulfilled by a marketplace (e.g. FBA, WFS, ZFS)?

When you freeze a product on ChannelEngine, the system sets your merchant-fulfilled stock to zero.

However, marketplace-fulfilled stock, such as Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS), Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), or Zalando Fulfillment Solutions (ZFS), is managed directly by the marketplace rather than ChannelEngine. Consequently, this inventory remains available for sale online.