How to export orders from your system(s) so they can be imported via CSV

Zamp does not integrate with every e-commerce, invoicing or bookkeeping platform. But we can process transactions from any system when they are imported via CSV.

We understand that different software will have different reporting/exporting capabilities, and that standard reports from your system may have different output columns than others. However, these are the guidelines to use when exporting transactions from your system to share with Zamp.

Transactions versus Line Items

In most systems that handle sale transactions, including Zamp, there is a difference between Transactions and Line Items. The relationship is one-to-many: a single transaction may have one or many line items. Think of your last trip to the grocery store: your purchase is a single transaction with a single subtotal and total, but each product you purchased is its own line item on the receipt.

When exporting your transactions for import into Zamp, if your transactions can include multiple line items, you must list line items individually, i.e. on their own spreadsheet rows. If you do not, we will not be able to process the import.

The first set of required columns below is for exports where transactions can include line items. If your transactions do not contain multiple line items, you can skip down to the second set of instructions.

Multiple line item export instructions

Before getting into the required columns, let's talk discounts, shipping & taxes.

Discounts

Depending on your circumstances, the discount(s) related to your customers' orders may be at the transaction or line item level. For example, imagine you are purchasing 5 products from an online store.

• If one of those products is 50% off, that is a line item discount — it only applies to a single line item
• If your entire order is 20% off, that is a transaction discount — it applies to all line items
  • This could appear as 20% off each line item, or 20% off your order subtotal. Because your entire order is discounted, it would be a transaction level discount in either case.

Basically, if you discount individual line items, you will need to include line items discounts in your export. If you discount entire orders, you will need to include transaction discounts. And yes, a single order could have both a transaction discount and line item discount(s).

Shipping

In most cases, shipping is calculated at the transaction level. During checkout for your 5-item purchase, for example, you normally will see a single shipping price for the whole order, not for each item individually. Most selling software structures shipping charges the same way from the merchant's perspective — a single shipping fee per order. That is a transaction shipping fee.

One major exception, however, is Amazon. (Sidebar: let us export from Amazon for you!) These days, Amazon rarely charges for shipping, and when shoppers buy from Amazon they only see a single shipping fee. On the back end, however, shipping fees are allocated to the individual line items in the order. So if you export your orders from Amazon, you will see shipping fees applied to each line item in an order.

Hopefully, Zamp is exporting your Amazon orders on your behalf, but if you're exporting from another system that applies shipping charges to individual line items, you must list those in your export as line item shipping fees.

Taxes

Unlike discounts and shipping fees, taxes cannot be applied to different contexts. Whether your software lists taxes per line item or for the entire transaction doesn't matter, because a transaction's tax will always equal the sum of the line item taxes. (Consumers aren't taxed for a transaction separately from the taxes paid on the individual line items.) So for taxes, you can just give us what you've got, and we'll make sure it gets imported correctly.

Required columns

These columns are must-have; without them, we will not be able to import, and will have to ask you to re-export.

• Transaction date
  • This should be the date of sale, not the date of shipping, payment, etc.
• Transaction/Order/Invoice ID
  • We need this value to connect line items to the same order
• Ship-to state
• Ship-to zip code
  • Can be Zip, Zip+4, or Zip+6
• Line item quantity and price
  • Quantity: the quantity of the line item (3 cans of soup would be a single line item with a quantity of 3)
  • Price: this must be the unit price of each line item, not the line item subtotal (the price of each can of soup, not the 3 cans of soup combined)
• Line item and/or transaction discounts
  • If you've given any discounts, they must be included, and there must be separate columns for transaction vs line item discounts
• Line item and/or transaction shipping & handling fees
  • If you've charged any fees for shipping, they must be included, and there must be separate columns for transaction vs line item shipping fees
• Transaction OR line item taxes
  • One or the other
• Transaction total
  • To reconcile the math, we need the total cost of the transaction, including the price, discounts, shipping, and tax for all line items or on the transaction itself — this is what the customer paid you
• Channel
  • For marketplace-facilitated transactions (Amazon, Walmart, eBay), include a channel column with a value of MARKETPLACE. Different states include or exclude marketplace-facilitated transactions in nexus calculations (more detail here), so including this value will make your nexus analysis more accurate
• Purpose
  • For wholesale and/or resale transactions, include a purpose column with a value of RESALE. Similar to marketplace transactions, this impacts nexus calculations (see more here)

Optional columns

• Ship-to city
• Product name
  • This isn't required, but will give your view in Zamp more detail. However, as long as you provide the order ID, you could always look up the order in your system of record to see the products included in the order

Single line item export instructions

If the software you're exporting from only ever has a single line item per transaction, you're in luck — it's an easier export! One common example of this scenario is wholesale orders. Generally, there's just a single invoice for a single wholesale customer, and while the order may include many different products, they're not recorded in the sale itself. For these cases, we would also expect the transaction "quantity" to be 1, referring to the single order.

Required columns

These columns are must-have; without them, we will not be able to import, and will have to ask you to re-export.

• Transaction date
  • This should be the date of sale, not the date of shipping, payment, etc.
• Ship-to state
• Ship-to zip code
  • Can be Zip, Zip+4, or Zip+6
• Transaction subtotal
  • The amount of the transaction before discounts, shipping and taxes
• Transaction discounts
  • The value of the discount applied to the transactions
• Transaction shipping & handling fees
  • The amount of shipping & handling fees for the transactions
• Transaction tax
  • The tax applied to the transaction
• Transaction total
  • To reconcile the math, we need the total cost of the transaction, including discounts, shipping, and tax — this is what the customer paid you
• Channel
  • For marketplace-facilitated transactions (Amazon, Walmart, eBay), include a channel column with a value of MARKETPLACE. Different states include or exclude marketplace-facilitated transactions in nexus calculations (more detail here), so including this value will make your nexus analysis more accurate
• Purpose
  • For wholesale and/or resale transactions, include a purpose column with a value of RESALE. Similar to marketplace transactions, this impacts nexus calculations (see more here)

Optional columns

• Transaction/Order/Invoice ID
  • This technically is a required column, so if you don't include it, we will generate a transaction ID for you. But it won't match what you have in your system
• Ship-to city
• Product name
  • This isn't required, but will give your view in Zamp more detail. However, as long as you provide the order ID, you could always look up the order in your system of record to see the products included in the order