Onboarding stage 3: Article onboarding
The third stage of your onboarding process, the Article onboarding stage. Here you'll see your online shop slowly take shape as you onboard your articles.
Introduction to Article Onboarding stage
Congratulations on successfully completing the Article Mapping stage of your onboarding journey!
You are now progressing to the Article onboarding stage. This includes reviewing your articles for errors that might have occurred during the article creation process, setting your prices, potentially performing a test order, as well as adding and confirming other required information.
Important
Once you are live, you can add, modify and remove your articles at any given time. All of your articles displayed online should always be available and in stock. They can be tagged as either never-out-of-stock (NOS) articles or part of the current season. You have the option to either backfill an already-existing assortment (overlapping) or create additional assortment (incremental) that is not yet sold on Zalando.
As a partner, you remain the owner of the article until the order is handed over to the customer. Should the customer return the article, the article ownership will also be returned to you.
Steps you will need to take during Article Onboarding stage
Step 1: Set price rule thresholds in zDirect
You will have to define the threshold for the minimum price, the maximum price and the maximum discount percentage rules in zDirect before setting the actual prices..
Step 2: Set prices
Setting prices can only be done by you. Please be aware that Zalando can provide neither guidance nor hints as this is strictly prohibited by antitrust law. This also concerns the topic of discounts. You are therefore fully free to determine the prices and discounts that you consider feasible*.
*Important note: you remain free in the pricing and discounting of your products and may remove articles from the dedicated section at any time. In order to avoid misleading prices, please make sure that discounted prices are compliant to these guidelines compliant reference price. Find out all you need to know about the key pricing initiatives we've introduced as part of our Fair Pricing Framework.
To maintain our customers’ trust, Zalando will penalise you if you set your prices higher than the reference price.
The exact process for setting and adjusting prices depends on your chosen integration method:
Via integrator: Prices can be set and adjusted in the database of your chosen integration provider, eg. Tradebyte. It typically takes a few hours for valid* price updates to become visible on Zalando, depending on the export frequency of the integrator, and 24 hours for updated prices to become visible on Zalando as part of the nightly export. Please remember to upload prices in the local currency for each market.
You can check your price validation results via the:
zDirect UI: The second option is to connect with Zalando and adjust prices in the zDirect Price Management feature. This feature is only available to DI Partners that use ZFS as their logistic solution. It typically takes less than one hour for your valid1 price updates to become visible on Zalando. Please remember to upload prices in the local currency for each market.
Step 3: Ensure correct article upload
After you share the article details, each article will go through four consecutive validation steps before they can go online on Zalando.
Please take a moment to check that the articles in zDirect were uploaded correctly. The status should be ZABLO_13 or ZANOS_01 for partners using ZFS. The four validation steps in the onboarding process described above are categorised as Article status clusters. These indicate which part of the onboarding process your articles are currently in. Article status clusters are further broken down into article status codes, which provide more specific information on the onboarding status of your articles.
In the table below you will find an overview of which steps of the validation process these article status clusters belong to.
Article status cluster | Validation step in the article onboarding process | Additional information |
|---|---|---|
PS | First validation through automated rules | An article must first pass the automated check to progress to the manual review.
If there is a problem with your article, you will see article status codes in this format: PS_
After the article is corrected, it will go through this automated check again. |
ACS | Second validation through manual checks | Every status code beginning with an ACS_ means that the article is currently in the second review stage. This is a manual review in which Zalando checks every article to see if it matches all the requirements. If we have not managed to manually review an article yet, you will see the word Backlog under the Status column on the Article Listing feature on zDirect. If an article does not meet a requirement, it will be assigned a status code that will start with ACS_. |
CAT | Article creation has failed despite successful manual review | Rarely, it may happen that an article successfully passes through the first two steps but in the next step, the technical creation in the Zalando system fails. Please refer to the information provided in Article Listing on zDirect and contact us for support if necessary. |
JET
| Final manual review step; article requires further information from the Partner.
| After an article has been successfully created as a Zalando SKU, it needs to pass a final manual review before it can go online. This is where the article’s onsite appearance -what the article will look like on Zalando -will be reviewed and validated. When an article is missing information in this final validation step, you will see status codes within the JET cluster and the status code will begin with JET_. In this case, please reach out to us via the contact form and select Onboarding if you are a new partner or select Article Onboarding if you have already gone live on Zalando and want to add more articles. |
ZA | Article status after production (article SKU is created but not live yet)
| The status codes in the ZA* cluster only occur after an article has been created in Zalando’s system. WIth codes in this cluster, you generally do not need to do anything other than allocate stock for your articles if it is missing If an article is blocked but should be online, please reach out to your contact at Zalando directly if you have one or contact us via the contact form and select Onboarding if you are a new partner or select Article Onboarding if you have already gone live on Zalando and want to add more articles. Here are the most common ZA codes: Article blocker (ZABLO): this will prevent the article from going online. Data processing backlog (ZAPRO): a recently created article has not yet been processed Online status (ZAON): your article is online and selling. Online status (ZANON): your article is currently backfilling - replenishing stock in our warehouses. Online status (ZANOS): your article is not online due to missing stock. Online status (ZANOP): your article is not online due to missing price information. |
You can find the article status codes under the Issues column in the Article Listing feature on zDirect.
Focus on never-out-of-stock or next season articles to ensure seasonal relevance once the onboarding journey is complete.
Step 4: Confirm price validity
Verify the accuracy of the price information submitted in zDirect.
Step 5: Confirm the use of e-invoicing (optional)
Depending on the location of your company and/or your warehouse or market you’re selling in, it’s possible that you are responsible for including invoices in your parcels. If that’s the case, this would be simplified by using the Zalando e-invoicing service: Invoister. This service transmits our partners’ invoices to the corresponding customers via email. Our team will support you in the configuration process.
Step 6: Send your onboarded articles to Zalando warehouse (only relevant for partners using Zalando Fulfilment Solutions)
Once your articles are successfully onboarded to Zalando, you have to send them to the Zalando warehouse so that Zalando can fulfil your customer orders. You can manage your forecast and shipments via the Fulfilment section on zDirect. For more please see:
Step 7: Perform a test order (only relevant for partners using zDirect UI and ZSS partners)
If necessary, your Onboarding Manager will ask you via email to initiate a test order. Once your parcel has been dispatched, please provide the tracking link and the Zalando order number to your Onboarding Manager.
Steps your integrator will need to take during the article onboarding stage (for third party integration only)
Step 1: Ensure correct article upload
If some articles are blocked during the article onboarding process, your integrator will track this information and support you by inserting any missing or corrected information directly into the data feed.
Steps Zalando will need to take during Article Onboarding stage
Step 1: Provide feedback
Zalando will provide you with feedback and guide you towards the successful onboarding of your articles, so that they can be available for sale on Zalando as soon as possible.
Best practice
To help you with the article onboarding process and give you transparency, we highly recommend using the Article Listing feature on zDirect. This feature provides you with the overview of your articles, their onboarding status and price data in real time.
Below is an image of the Article Listing report. You can refer to the Status column to check the onboarding progress of your articles. Any potential onboarding issues will be displayed as a code (also referred to as an article status code ) under the Issues column.
You can click on the Information icon next to the status code to find out what it means and how to resolve it.
You can only select those articles that are Live, Blocked, In Review or Rejected. You can do this by using the tabs highlighted in the image above. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will also have the option to download a CSV of the report.
Important
Please monitor the status of your articles and potential issues very closely. If your articles are rejected and you do not resolve the issue that caused the rejection, your articles will be stuck at that stage and cannot be onboarded.
Check out this article for a comprehensive list of article status codes:
Points of contact
If you have a direct onboarding point of contact at Zalando to support you with article onboarding, please reach out to them in case of any issues or questions.
Otherwise you can reach out to us using the support form. Please select the topic Onboarding and then select request type Article Onboarding.
Next up: the Final Revision and Go live stage!
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Zalando validates all price updates and may block prices to mitigate the risk of price mistakes. Please see this article for more information.