ChannelEngine: how to manage economic operators

About this article

This article explains how to create economic operators on bol and TikTok Shop, retrieve them from these marketplaces, and assign the economic operator IDs to your products.

Table of contents

Introduction

Create economic operators on the marketplace

Map economic operators on ChannelEngine

Download economic operators on ChannelEngine

Export economic operators to the marketplace

• CSV file examples

Introduction

Economic operators are entities required by the Digital Services Act (DSA). They can be manufacturers, distributors, or importers of the product.

Some marketplaces (e.g.: bol and TikTok Shop) require you to assign an economic operator ID to each product.

Create economic operators on the marketplace

The first step is to submit the required economic operator data in the marketplace backend. For instructions on how to add new economic operators, refer to the following resources:

• Adding responsible economic operators within the EU (bol)
• Product listing safety and compliance requirements (TikTok Shop)

Map economic operators on ChannelEngine

After you provide the economic operators to the marketplace, upload them to ChannelEngine and assign economic operator IDs to your products.

1. Go to the Mappings step of your channel.
2. Open the Economic operators tab.
3. Click Schedule sync task.
4. Your economic operator is synced to ChannelEngine and appears as a line item. 
   • ID - the ID of the economic operator.
   • Name - the name of the economic operator.
   • Location - the registered address of the economic operator.
   • Email - the email address of the economic operator.
   • Phone - the phone number of the economic operator.
   • Status - the status of the economic operator (Valid or Invalid).
5. Copy the ID number from the ID field. 
6. Go to Content or Offer mappings.
7. Map the attribute (Economic operator ID on bol; Responsible person ID on TikTok Shop) to the copied ID. Use advanced rules to simplify mapping and assign multiple products to the same ID.

Download economic operators on ChannelEngine

Once you retrieve economic operators from the marketplace, you can download them as a CSV file. To download economic operators:

1. On the Economic operators tab, click Export.
2. Open the downloaded CSV file to view all stored economic operators and their IDs.

To update your economic operators via ChannelEngine, you can modify the downloaded CSV file and upload it back to ChannelEngine. To learn more about this, check out the next section, Export economic operators to the marketplace.

Export economic operators to the marketplace

You can upload a CSV file that contains economic operator data to ChannelEngine for export to the marketplace. Currently, the export feature is only available for bol.

In the CSV file, you can:

• Update the existing economic operator details on ChannelEngine and subsequently the marketplace.
• Add new economic operator IDs on ChannelEngine and subsequently the marketplace.

When working with a CSV file, follow these guidelines:

• Ensure the contact details are those of the manufacturer, and not your personal.
• Use a semicolon (;) as the delimiter.
• Enclose text values in double quotation marks ("").

The CSV columns include:

• Id - the ID of the economic operator. Leave this empty for new operators.
• Name - the name of the economic operator. The maximum character count is 100.
• AdditionalAddressInfo - the optional address details. The maximum character count is 100.
• Street - the street name of the economic operator. The maximum character count is 100.
• City - the city of the economic operator. The maximum character count is 100.
• PostalCode - the postal code of the economic operator. The maximum character count is 100.
• HouseNumber - the house number of the economic operator. The maximum character count is 100.
• Country - the country of the economic operator. Use a two-letter code, e.g.: AT, BE, FR, IT, DE, NL, and US.
• Email - the email of the economic operator. The maximum character count is 100.
• PhoneNumber - the phone number of the economic operator. The character count must be between 7 and 17 characters. Supported characters are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ( ), and +.
• Action - the action to perform on the economic operator. Options include:
  • SYNC - create or update the economic operator.
  • DELETE - remove the economic operator.

Uploading the file

On the Economic operators tab, click Upload CSV and select your file from the file manager.

Once ChannelEngine uploads the data, it uses scheduled tasks to export the economic operator details to the marketplace and retrieve any updates from the marketplace. The synchronization status changes accordingly:

• In sync - the details are synchronized between ChannelEngine and the marketplace. The upload was successful.
• Pending - ChannelEngine has scheduled the export but it has not completed.
• Failed - ChannelEngine could not export the details due to an error. E.g.: the economic operator IDs on ChannelEngine do not match those on the marketplace.

CSV file examples

Creating an economic operator

"Id";"Name";"AdditionalAddressInfo";"Street";"City";"PostalCode";"HouseNumber";"Country";"Email";"PhoneNumber";"Action"
"";"ABC Logistics";"Suite 12";"Main Street";"Amsterdam";"1012AB";"50A";"NL";"info@abclogistics.com";"+31201234567";"SYNC"

Updating an economic operator

"Id";"Name";"AdditionalAddressInfo";"Street";"City";"PostalCode";"HouseNumber";"Country";"Email";"PhoneNumber";"Action"
"12345";"ABC Logistics";"Suite 12";"Main Street";"Amsterdam";"1012AB";"50A";"NL";"info@abclogistics.com";"+31201234567";"SYNC"

Deleting an economic operator

"Id";"Name";"AdditionalAddressInfo";"Street";"City";"PostalCode";"HouseNumber";"Country";"Email";"PhoneNumber";"Action"
"12345";"ABC Logistics";"Suite 12";"Main Street";"Amsterdam";"1012AB";"50A";"NL";"info@abclogistics.com";"+31201234567";"DELETE”