Validating supplier product data with Vendor Portal

A step-by-step walkthrough of the Pimberly Vendor Portal

The Vendor Portal lets suppliers upload product data in a set format and have it checked automatically against your rules. This guide follows the supplier's path from opening the portal to fixing flagged products, showing how validation catches issues before the data reaches your catalogue.

What the walkthrough covers

1. Open the Vendor Portal
2. Review the template and its validation rules
3. Use dropdown lists for standardised values
4. Upload the completed file
5. Let the portal validate the data
6. Review the results and download the error report
7. Fix the flagged products and upload again

Step 1: Open the Vendor Portal

The Vendor Portal is where suppliers manage the product data they send you. The dashboard shows uploaded and imported product counts, outstanding data requests, and the product data templates available to download.

1. Sign in to the Vendor Portal.
2. On the Dashboard, find the Product Data Templates table and the template for the products you are supplying (for example, PDT_Aircon).
3. Click Download in the Action column to get the template.

Note: Each template carries its own validation rules, so the data suppliers return matches the format you expect.

Step 2: Review the template and its validation rules

Validation rules are built into the template itself, so suppliers can see what is required before they start filling it in.

1. Open the downloaded template and go to the products tab.
2. Check the header rows for each attribute: the data type (for example string), an example value, and the rule. Description, for example, shows Min 1 | Max 150 Characters.
3. Note the required fields, such as Product Class and Product ID.

Note: Required attribution and minimum and maximum character limits are set per attribute, so incomplete or over-length entries are caught before upload.

Step 3: Use dropdown lists for standardised values

Some attributes use dropdown lists to keep values consistent across every supplier.

1. Select a cell in a controlled column, such as Country of Origin or Colour.
2. Click the dropdown arrow and choose from the approved set of values.

Note: Dropdowns prevent free-text variations (for example "UK" versus "United Kingdom"), so values stay consistent across the catalogue.

Step 4: Upload the completed file

Once the template is filled in, suppliers upload it back through the portal.

1. On the Dashboard, in the Uploaded Products card, click Upload Data.
2. In the Import Product Data Template dialog, on the Import step, drag the file onto the Select PDT File area or click it to browse. Supported formats: .xls and .xlsx.
3. Click Upload.

Note: You can close the dialog at any time and the upload continues in the background.

Step 5: Let the portal validate the data

The portal processes the file and checks it against the template's rules.

1. On the Process step, watch the progress as the portal works through each stage: Download Excel workbook, Extract schema and validation table IDs, Fetch validation rules, Process rows, Upload validation reports, and Finalise import.
2. Wait for processing to finish.

Note: Validation runs automatically against your configuration, so suppliers do not need to check the rules by hand.

Step 6: Review the results and download the error report

The Results step splits the upload into products that passed and products that failed.

1. On the Results step, review the Product Validation Results table: the Success count shows valid products and the Failed count shows those with issues.
2. Click Download next to Failed to get the error report.
3. Click Load Valid Products to bring the products that passed into the portal.

Note: In this example, 28 products passed and 14 failed. Suppliers do not have to guess which products need fixing.

Step 7: Fix the flagged products and upload again

The error report lists exactly what went wrong, product by product.

1. Open the downloaded error report and go to the products tab.
2. Read the highlighted Errors column for each row, for example "CountryofOrigin: has a specific dataset of values, but South Korea is not in it" or "desc: is required but its cell is empty".
3. Correct the flagged attributes in the original file.
4. Upload the corrected file again, following Step 4.

Note: Every issue is reported in one place, so suppliers can correct all of them before re-uploading rather than uploading repeatedly.