Carrefour.fr: marketplace guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the French operation of the Boulogne-Billancourt-based marketplace Carrefour.fr. Here you can find information on how to request a Carrefour.fr account, how to configure this marketplace on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Marketplace features

Settings and configuration

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Categorization
• Mappings
• Listed products

FAQs

Commercial information

Founded	1959
Founders	Denis Defforey, Marcel Fournier, Jacques Defforey, Gustave Badin
Headquarters	Boulogne-Billancourt, France
Area served (orders)	France
Revenue	circa USD 762.8 million (2020)
Number of monthly visits	circa 12 million (2021)
Website	Carrefour.fr
Setup cost	none
Commission	7-20%, depending on the category
Other costs	none
Payment	thrice/month (on the 6th, 16th, and 26th)
Product categories	electronics, domestic appliances, toys, clothing, and more
Input language	French
Input currency	EUR
Content creation	yes
Minimum number of SKUs	no
Advertisement options	no
Profile on ChannelEngine	Carrefour.fr

How to request an account

To start selling on Carrefour.fr, go to the Marketplace Carrefour page, select Form, and submit the required details.

Associated costs

Carrefour.fr does not charge a setup or monthly fee, but it does charge a commission of 7-20% depending on the product category.

Marketplace features

Supported	Not supported
Product offers (EAN matching)	Returns (marketplace)
Product content	Repricing
Orders	Marketplace fulfillment service
Cancelations	Automatic relationships
Returns/refunds (merchant)	HTML formatting
Shipments	Sales channels
Product variations (sizes/colors)
Carrier mapping

Settings and configuration

Setting up each marketplace on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, once you add the marketplace:

1. Go through the Setup.
2. Create a Product selection.
3. Complete the Categorization.
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
6. Finish the Activation.
7. Check the Listed products overview.

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On ChannelEngine

Carrefour.fr is a Mirakl-based marketplace, so you can connect it to ChannelEngine using a Mirakl Connect SSO account. For more information on this, check out the Mirakl-based channels: SSO authorization article.

As Carrefour.fr does not support repricing, you can leave the Mirakl seller name field empty.

Invoice uploads

To configure your invoice settings, click Advanced settings. You can then click the dropdown menu Enable invoice uploading, which contains the following options:

• ChannelEngine invoices - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it automatically generates an invoice and attaches it to the shipment before exporting it.
• Merchant invoices (optional) - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it exports it – even if there is no invoice attached to it.
• Merchant invoices (required) - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it only exports it if an invoice is attached to it. If not, you receive a notification.
• None - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it takes no action other than notifying you that no invoice is present.

If you select one of the Merchant invoices options, make sure to enable the invoice upload to ChannelEngine via the Merchant API. For that, call the POST /v2/orders/{merchantOrderNo}/invoice endpoint. Note that only invoices in PDF are supported.

Invalid XML characters

To remove invalid XML characters from your product data, click Advanced settings and enable the Check and filter invalid XML characters setting. ChannelEngine checks product data submitted in the XML format for invalid characters (e.g.: Ã, ¢, â, etc.). Once identified, invalid characters are removed or converted to a valid equivalent.

Categorization

Categorization is mandatory if you want to create or update existing product information on Carrefour.fr. Both categorizations and mappings only result in updates if the content connection is enabled, and the relevant credentials have been entered (see the Setup section).

Product descriptions must be in French on Carrefour.fr, and the categorization and mappings are in French too – though the name of some attributes is in English.

Mappings

Content

All products (required)

• Article description - the product's long description, with a minimum of 90 characters.
• EAN 13 - the product's 13-digit EAN or GTIN.
• Main image - the product's main image, with a maximum size of 500 kB.
• Shop SKU (Seller's reference) - your internal product reference, usually the Merchant product number or SKU.
• Product name - the product's title. The maximum number of characters is 85.

All products (optional)

• Brand - the product's brand.
• Image 2-6 - the product's additional images. The maximum size is 500 kB.

Offer

Required

• Price - your desired sale price.

Optional

The following offer attributes are common to some Mirakl-based marketplaces, particularly in France and Germany:

• ECO #1-5 - Amount - the amount due for the eco-contribution related to the product. E.g.: 2.50.
• ECO #1-5 - EPR category code - the extended producer responsibility (EPR) code that applies to the product. For a list of category codes, check out the article Providing data to comply with circular economy regulations in Mirakl's help center (note that you need to be logged in to Mirakl to access this page). E.g.: DE-WEEE, FR-DEA, etc. 
• ECO #1-5 - Producer ID - your producer ID, received upon registering with a packaging register, such as Germany's LUCID. The maximum number of characters is 255.

The following offer attributes are common to Mirakl-based marketplaces:

• Leadtime to shipment - the number of days before you ship the product. By default, this is set to two. You can create your own unique rules, if applicable.
• Minimum quantity alert - map this attribute to receive a notification from ChannelEngine if your stock drops below the threshold defined.
• Offer state - the product's condition. Find your option from the dropdown menu by selecting the fixed value to apply to all.
• Product tax code - the taxation code applicable to the product.
• Logistic class - your optional shipping class. Make sure to map it using the marketplace’s codes, not the labels visible in the front-end. These codes vary per marketplace. Below you can find the codes used by this marketplace:

Code	Label
XXS	Produits très légers (Very light products)
S	Produits standards spéciaux (Special standard products)
M	Produits moyens (Average products)
L	Produits lourds et longs (Heavy and long products)
XL	Produits très lourds et très longs (Very heavy and very long products)
XXL	Produits hors gabarit (Oversize products)

Working with discounts

• To set up a discount, you must map the Discount price, Discount start date, and Discount end date attributes. If you want to set a permanent discount, map the Discount end date attribute with a date in the far future instead of leaving it unmapped. Otherwise the offer is not exported, and errors are shown on the Validation and feedback tab.
• If your discounted price is not lower than the base price, it is not exported.
• If you do not want to set a bulk discount, leave the Discount quantity threshold attribute unmapped – otherwise the export is broken.
• If you do want to set a bulk discount, the Discount quantity threshold must be set to a value higher than 1. E.g.: a value of 2 indicates that two or more of the product must be purchased at the same time for the buyer to benefit from the discount.

Carrier

Carrier mapping is not required on Carrefour.fr. However, you can map your carrier to a specific list of carriers maintained by Carrefour.fr. This allows for working tracking codes in the back-end, as well as for the buyer. If your default carrier is missing, please contact Carrefour.fr.

Listed products

If you have problems with products not appearing on Mirakl-based marketplaces – especially if you are trying to create products – check the Listed products page for more information.

You can either filter on Channel status (select Invalid to show all products that ChannelEngine has not exported, such as products with an empty GTIN or that currently do not exist on the marketplace) or use the Validation and feedback tab to see all known errors for specific products.

For detailed status reports, go to the Mirakl back-end. Their reports contain specific errors if a product or product offer cannot be created. To find them, go to My inventory, Import from file, Track offer imports/Track product imports. By hovering over the 'i' under the Status section, you can see how many products in the file were processed correctly and how many had errors, etc.

If there are errors, the last column shows a downloadable file in which they are listed. The same goes for the product file import, but this can contain multiple files because processing goes through several systems. There is also a manual check of your submitted content, which, once approved, goes to staging as well. Note that you need to map as much as possible to prevent products from not being created.

FAQs

Can I create variants on Carrefour.fr?
Creating variants on Carrefour.fr is possible, however, it works differently than on other marketplaces. To create product families, Carrefour.fr uses the attribute Variant, which must be the EAN of the first child of the product family. To use this feature, the attribute Variant must be mapped to the ChannelEngine attribute Parent SKU. ChannelEngine uses the product's parent to export the EAN of the first child of the family.

How often does each task run on Mirakl-based marketplaces?

By default, Mirakl-based marketplaces follow the schedule below:

Task	Frequency
Export product data to channel	every 60 minutes
Export product offers to channel	every 15 minutes
Import product offers from channel	every 15 minutes
Import orders from channel	every 15 minutes
Export order shipments to channel	every 15 minutes
Export returns to channel	every 30 minutes