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

Setup

• Via the web application
• Via the Merchant API

FAQs

Introduction

The freeze products feature allows you to temporarily set one or more product's stock quantity to zero, making the products unavailable for sale on all the connected marketplaces. This provides a window for investigation and troubleshooting a stock-related issue, without the need to remove the products from your selection.

You can use the freeze products feature if:

• 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 issue is resolved, you can unfreeze the products. This action reinstates the product's stock to the quantity specified on ChannelEngine, resuming the sales on the connected marketplaces.

Setup

Via the web application

To freeze products via the ChannelEngine web application:

1. Go to Products, Products.
2. Choose an option:
   • To freeze all products on the page, click + Select all at the top-right corner. You can navigate between pages and continue selecting all products, if needed.
   • To select specific products to freeze, click + Select under each product. 
   NB: this step is specific to the grid view of the Products page. However, you can also select to freeze all or specific products by going to the list view and using the checkboxes. Use the top checkbox to select all products on the page.
3. Click the Actions menu and then click Freeze products.
4. In the popup that appears, specify the reason for freezing the products. E.g.: the product's stock is displayed incorrectly on OTTO Market, causing overselling issues.
5. Click Freeze products.
6. Wait between 30 and 60 minutes for the product's stock to be updated, as different marketplaces have different schedules for offer updates.
7. Once you have addressed the stock or pricing issue, return to the Products page of the frozen products.
8. To filter your products on frozen products, toggle the Frozen products switch. 
   
9. Choose an option:
   • To unfreeze all products per page, click + Select all at the top-right corner. 
   • To select specific products to unfreeze, click + Select under each product. 
10. Click the Actions menu and then click Unfreeze products.
11. Indicate the reason for unfreezing the products. E.g.: the issue with the missing stock has been resolved.
12. Click Unfreeze.

You can also freeze/unfreeze a product from its Product details page. To do this, use the Freeze product and Unfreeze product buttons. To view the freezing and unfreezing history of a product, along with the related comments, click Freeze history.

Via the Merchant API

To freeze a product via ChannelEngine's Merchant API, send a request to the POST /v2/products/freeze endpoint with the required product information:

• 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.
• 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.