Product uploads are the foundation of building and scaling your dropshipping business. AutoDS simplifies the process of adding products to your store by offering multiple import methods, automation features, and customization options that save time and ensure accuracy across your listings.

This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about uploading products to your store, from basic single-product imports to advanced settings that control pricing, shipping, monitoring, and automation. You will learn how to manage product variations, configure settings that impact all uploads, and use specialized tools to optimize your product catalog.

Before you begin uploading products to AutoDS, it's important to understand some key considerations that will help you avoid common issues and set up your dropshipping business for success. These guidelines cover product restrictions and supplier compatibility.

AutoDS does not support customizable or personalized products, as they require manual input per order. These products include items where customers can add custom text, names, dates, or personalized designs.
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Examples of unsupported products:

Uploads of such products will fail with the error "Product does not exist on the supplier." This happens because the product variations are infinite and cannot be mapped to specific SKUs for inventory management and order fulfillment.

​Alternative for branded products:

If you want to sell branded products with custom designs, use Print on Demand suppliers instead. These suppliers specialize in custom-printed items and integrate with AutoDS for automated fulfillment.

AutoDS does not support bundle products because they cannot be accurately mapped to individual SKUs for inventory management and order fulfillment.

Examples of bundle products:

When attempting to upload a bundle product, you'll see the error "Product does not exist on the supplier website."

Some suppliers enforce minimum or maximum order quantities for specific products, particularly wholesale suppliers or manufacturers. AutoDS does not support products with these restrictions because dropshipping typically involves single-unit orders.
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Common scenarios:

When you attempt to upload such products, the system may display unusually high prices, such as 133 or 266, to prevent potential losses from unfulfilled orders or inventory mismanagement. These inflated prices serve as a warning that the product has quantity restrictions.

AutoDS integrates with numerous suppliers across different regions, allowing you to upload products from their catalogs directly to your connected selling channels. When uploading products from supported suppliers, AutoDS extracts product information, including title, description, images, variants, pricing, and stock levels.

​Supported suppliers and warehouse regions for product upload (34 suppliers total):

For fast shipping, high-quality items, discounts for AutoDS dropshippers, logo branding on gift cards, and easy payment options, consider using the AutoDS Warehouse. This service offers curated products with quality inspections and faster delivery times than those from standard Chinese suppliers.

Before you upload any products to your store in AutoDS, you must configure essential settings that control how AutoDS processes, monitors, and prices your listings. These settings affect every product you upload and determine how AutoDS handles supplier changes, shipping costs, and automation rules during and after the product upload process.

Configuring these settings correctly ensures your uploads are accurate, automated, and optimized for profitability.

Before uploading products to your store, you must configure your supplier settings, including:

Quick summary:

Once your suppliers are configured, you are ready to upload products.

The general settings section, located in the General tab of Supplier Settings, establishes default configurations for product monitoring and inventory behavior. These settings help maintain consistency across your catalog, including weight units, SKU handling, and supplier selection logic for all products uploaded from the selected supplier.

Default weight unit for shipping calculations

The default weight unit setting allows you to choose between pounds (lb), kilograms (kg), and other available units to ensure consistent weight measurements across your products.

Selecting the correct default weight unit for your listings in AutoDS is essential for:

Choose the weight unit that matches your primary selling region or the unit required by your selling channel. This helps prevent issues with shipping estimates, fees, and delivery expectations for your product uploads.

To change the default weight unit for your product uploads in AutoDS, go to Supplier settings → General tab and update the Default Weight Unit field.

Automatic SKU filling for eBay listings

The SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is a unique code used to identify and track products in your inventory. In Supplier settings > General settings, the automatic SKU filling option controls how AutoDS populates the SKU field (custom label) for your eBay listings.

When Automatic SKU filling for eBay is enabled:

When Automatic SKU filling for eBay is disabled (recommended):

To change the automatic SKU filling setting for your eBay product uploads in AutoDS, open Supplier Settings → General tab, find Automatic SKU filling, and enable or disable it according to your preference.

Protecting your listings from competitors

To protect your best-selling items from competitors' research tools on eBay, you should remove product identifiers from the Custom Label field:

Managing SKUs for product variations

Multi-variation listings without unique SKUs per variation cannot be properly monitored by AutoDS. This commonly occurs when products were uploaded directly to eBay or through other software, or when SKUs were changed directly on eBay after an AutoDS upload.

Common issues:

To add SKUs to existing variations:

Best practices:

When you use Amazon as a supplier to source products for selling on other platforms (like eBay, Shopify, or TikTok Shop), AutoDS monitors the Amazon Buy Box to track product pricing, availability, and stock levels. This monitoring ensures that the products you sell on your store remain accurate and available.

How Buy Box monitoring works with Amazon suppliers:

For Amazon suppliers, AutoDS limits monitoring to sellers on the first page of the supplier list to prioritize high-quality sellers with strong performance metrics. Sellers on later pages often have weaker performance ratings, increasing the risk of shipping delays, product quality issues, and customer complaints. By focusing on the first page, AutoDS ensures that your products are sourced from reliable sellers while maintaining efficient system performance.

The Choose from the supplier table option controls how AutoDS prioritizes alternative Amazon sellers when the Buy Box seller is unavailable. This setting impacts how your Amazon-sourced products are monitored and fulfilled after they are listed.

You can choose how AutoDS prioritizes Amazon suppliers when using the supplier table:

To change how AutoDS chooses Amazon suppliers from the suppliers table:

The Prime only setting controls whether AutoDS tracks only Amazon Prime-eligible products from your selected supplier.

Why use Prime only monitoring for your Amazon product uploads:

If Prime-only is disabled, AutoDS will choose an alternative seller that matches your other preferences (Cheapest first or Prime first). This provides more flexibility in pricing but may result in longer shipping times for some orders.

Prime option configuration:

To import products with Prime shipping, follow these steps:

How Prime Only works:

When this option is enabled, AutoDS only tracks Amazon Prime-eligible products. If a product loses its Prime status, AutoDS automatically sets it to On Hold (quantity 0) in your store to prevent new sales with slower or less reliable shipping.

The "Walmart only" feature controls how AutoDS monitors and fulfills products sourced from Walmart membership sellers.

When 'Walmart only' is enabled in the Supplier Settings → General tab:

To enable or disable "Walmart only" monitoring for your Walmart product uploads in AutoDS, open Supplier settings → General tab for your Walmart supplier and toggle the "Walmart only" option.

The Lister settings in AutoDS let you define default preferences for your product uploads, including product details, shipping methods, templates, and policies for each supplier and store. By configuring these settings, you:

Once configured, Lister settings are automatically applied to all new uploads, so you can scale your catalog without repeating the same configuration steps.

The Lister settings can be accessed directly from your AutoDS account. To configure your upload preferences:

Note: Changes in Lister settings apply only to newly uploaded products. To update existing listings, use the bulk action tool.

Click here to learn more about bulk changes in AutoDS.

The main configuration panel in the Lister settings includes essential options that control how products are uploaded and priced across your stores. Each setting can be customized per supplier to match your business needs.

The table below summarizes the main Lister settings and their impact on product uploads and listing behavior in AutoDS.

Selecting the proper shipping method in your Lister Settings ensures AutoDS calculates accurate costs and delivery times for your listings.

Example: AliExpress, with a product base price $5:

This configuration works together with the Include shipping price feature (located in the AutoDS Pricing Settings) to ensure your final product pricing reflects both the supplier cost and the shipping method you've selected.

Why this matters: Including shipping costs in your product's source price protects your profit margins from unexpected changes in supplier shipping fees. The shipping cost is added to the base product price before your pricing rules are applied, so your markup stays consistent.

Beyond the main settings, Advanced Lister Settings offer powerful options that provide precise control over your listing behavior. Use these settings to automate complex workflows, avoid platform violations, and maximize your listing performance without manual work.

Why use advanced settings: They help you scale faster by handling edge cases automatically, like filtering problematic products, managing variant complexity, and staying compliant with marketplace rules.

The table below explains each advanced Lister setting, what it does, and why it matters for controlling how your products are uploaded and managed in AutoDS.

The Lister Settings also includes the Price and Stock Monitoring feature, which automatically updates your listings when supplier stock or pricing changes.

Click here to read more about product monitoring in AutoDS.

The AutoDS Lister Settings provides AI-powered tools to help you optimize your product titles and descriptions. These tools generate buyer-oriented content that can improve your listing performance and conversion rates.

Click here to read more about the AutoDS AI tools.

Predefining item specifics in your Lister Settings ensures AutoDS applies consistent attributes to all listings. This is essential on platforms like eBay, which require detailed product attributes for better search visibility and compliance.

You can configure default item specifics that AutoDS will automatically apply to all new uploads, reducing the time spent on manual entry.

Within your Lister Settings in AutoDS, eBay stores require additional configuration for location and business policies. Read more about it here.

The product upload process in AutoDS begins with selecting the correct store and choosing your preferred import method. This section covers all available methods and settings to help you upload products efficiently and accurately.

Editing products through AutoDS ensures proper synchronization between platforms and prevents errors such as duplicate listings, inventory mismatches, or automation failures.

Making product changes directly on your selling channel can cause synchronization issues and disrupt automation features such as price monitoring, stock updates, and order fulfillment in AutoDS.

Before importing any products, you must select the store where you want to upload the products. This step ensures your listings appear in the correct selling channel and prevents accidental uploads to the wrong account.

To choose the correct store:

If you manage multiple stores on different selling channels, you can switch between them at any time before starting the upload process. Each store may have different settings, templates, and automation rules, so always verify the selected store before importing.

When uploading products to AutoDS, always use the clean product URL that ends with ".html" or the product ID, without additional parameters. This ensures accurate product identification and prevents upload errors caused by session-specific or tracking parameters.

URL structure best practices:

Copying a URL after selecting a variant (such as color or size) will limit your upload to only that variant. To import all available product variants, copy the URL directly from the main product page before making any variant selections.

How to get clean URLs:

Method 1 - Copy from address bar: Copy the URL from your browser's address bar and manually remove everything after ".html" or the product ID.

Method 2 - Use the share button: Many supplier websites have a share or copy link button that provides clean URLs automatically. Look for share icons on product pages.

Method 3 - Right-click on product title: Right-click on the product title or main image and select "Copy link address" to get a clean URL in most cases.

Method 4 - Use AutoDS Helper Extension: Install the AutoDS Helper Extension on your browser to automatically extract clean product URLs with one click. This browser tool allows you to upload products directly from the supplier's website without manually copying URLs, streamlining your product import workflow, and reducing upload errors.

The single product upload method allows you to import one item at a time using its product URL or product ID. This method is ideal when you want to carefully select specific products or test new items before adding them in bulk.

To upload a single product:

Tips:

Bulk import enables you to upload multiple products simultaneously, saving significant time when building or expanding your product catalog. AutoDS offers two methods for bulk importing products, as explained below:

Note: When using bulk import in AutoDS, be aware that processing times may vary depending on the batch size.

The Multiple URLs or IDs method lets you paste multiple product URLs or IDs at once to import them in bulk.

To upload using multiple URLs or IDs:

You can paste up to 500 URLs or IDs at once for optimal system performance. After adding them to Drafts, you can review and edit each product before publishing to your store.

To avoid delays during multiple URLs' bulk import, consider splitting the products into smaller groups and processing each group sequentially.

The CSV file method allows you to upload multiple products using a spreadsheet file. This is especially useful when migrating from another platform or when you have a large inventory to import.

To upload products via a CSV file:

When using the CSV file upload method, consider splitting large inventories into smaller CSV files to reduce processing delays.

If you are migrating from another monitoring software or from your selling channel, you can import existing listings to AutoDS using CSV files.

Migrating from another software:

Migrating from eBay:

If you have existing eBay listings that you want to monitor in AutoDS, you can export them directly from eBay and import them using the CSV method.

To export listings from your eBay store:

After selecting products for upload in AutoDS, you have several options to control how and when the products are added to your store. Understanding these settings helps you manage your workflow and ensure products are uploaded correctly.

When uploading products, you can choose from four main options:

The option to schedule uploads enables you to plan when products are added to your store, which is useful for coordinating campaigns, managing peak hours, or automating uploads during specific time frames.

To schedule products for later upload:

The products will be added to your Scheduled Uploads section on Drafts, located in the left sidebar, and a confirmation notification will appear.

To view and manage your scheduled uploads:

After selecting products for upload (via single product, bulk import, or Marketplace) and clicking on the 'Edit upload settings' button, you will see the upload options screen. Before completing the upload, you can customize advanced settings that control how products are processed, as explained in the table below.

If you have products that were uploaded directly to your selling channel (not through AutoDS), they will appear as untracked. Untracked products cannot be monitored for stock or price changes until you connect them to AutoDS.

AutoDS allows you to upload and manage products with multiple variations (e.g., size, color, or model) from supported suppliers. Product variations enable you to offer different options for the same product within a single listing, creating a more professional shopping experience for your buyers.

Example: A product with two attributes (Color and Size), each offering four options, results in 16 variations (4 sizes × 4 colors).

To upload variations by default in AutoDS, enable this setting in Settings → Supplier Settings → Lister → Advanced Lister Settings → Upload Variations.

To list each variant (e.g., color, size) as an individual product in your store, you can enable the Split Variants into Products option:

1. Navigate to Advanced Lister Settings in your AutoDS account.

2. Turn on Split Variants into Products.

This setting only impacts newly-uploaded products. For existing imports, you will need to remove any unwanted variants manually.

After uploading a product with variations to AutoDS, you can edit each variation individually.

To edit product variations:

AutoDS provides specialized tools that enhance your product upload workflow, making it faster, more organized, and more efficient. These tools help you source products, import items with one click, organize your catalog, and protect multiple accounts from duplicate listings.

Understanding how to use these tools effectively can significantly reduce the time spent on manual tasks and help you scale your business more quickly.

The AutoDS Helper is a Chrome Extension that enables one-click product imports directly from supplier websites. When browsing products on supported supplier sites, you can instantly import items to your AutoDS account without manually copying URLs or product IDs.

The extension also helps with buyer address copying during order fulfillment, streamlining the entire workflow from product research to order processing.

The AutoDS Finder is a product research and upload tool that helps you quickly find hot-selling, profitable items and upload them directly to your store. Instead of spending hours on manual product research, Finder scans supported selling platforms for products with proven sales history and then looks for the same or similar items from supported suppliers.

With AutoDS Finder, you can:

You can access AutoDS Finder from your sidebar: Add products → AutoDS Finder.
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The AutoDS Finder utilizes product performance categories and credits to determine the number of products you can upload and the level of sales history you’re targeting.

Categories and credit cost:

The higher the category, the stronger the sales performance and the more AutoDS Finder credits each upload uses.

How AutoDS Finder credits work:

The AutoDS Finder supports a wide range of suppliers, including:

When using AutoDS Finder, you can choose how products are uploaded to your store:

Recurring imports with AutoDS Finder allow you to automate daily product uploads, ensuring your store always has fresh inventory. To set it, follow these steps:

To review or edit recurring uploads created by the AutoDS Finder, go to Drafts → Recurring.

In the screenshot below, each number corresponds to a specific section of the Recurring page. Use the table to see what each numbered element means.

Problem:

AutoDS Finder does not return any products, even after selecting a supplier and region.

Why this happens:

AutoDS Finder searches for products that match specific criteria (category, supplier, region, sales performance). However, Finder cannot always guarantee that products matching your exact criteria will be available at the time of your search.

Common reasons:

What happens to your credits:

If AutoDS Finder cannot locate products that match your criteria, your credits will be refunded. You will not lose credits when no products are found.

How to fix:

Try different search criteria:

Alternative:

If AutoDS Finder continues to return no results, you can always import products manually from any of our supported suppliers using the standard product upload methods.

The shipping time is not defined by AutoDS. They depend on your target country and the supplier's shipping capabilities.

To check the estimated shipping time for your products before uploading them:

For AutoDS Marketplace: Each product card shows the estimated shipping time (delivery window) right on the preview. This helps you set customer expectations before you import the product.

Print On Demand (POD): Click “View shipping options” on a POD product to see all available shipping methods and their delivery timeframes for different regions

After importing, configure your shipping settings:

Once you understand your supplier's shipping times, configure your selling channel and AutoDS settings accordingly:

1. Define shipping policies in your selling channel

Set up your shipping policies directly in your selling channel (eBay, Shopify, Amazon, etc.). These policies determine how your products are delivered and what costs apply to your customers.

2. AutoDS settings that impact shipping

AutoDS monitors and follows the shipping configurations you set. The key settings related to shipping are already covered in this article:

Best practice tip: Consider adding a buffer of approximately 5 days to your estimated shipping times to account for:

Many users focus only on the shortest possible delivery time, which is attractive to customers. However, if you cannot maintain that delivery time for any reason, you may receive negative reviews, which can significantly impact your business. Adding a buffer helps protect your store's reputation and sets realistic customer expectations.

If you see an error message when trying to upload a product to AutoDS, check the table below to see possible reasons and workarounds:

If the issue persists after completing all the steps above, the import may have failed due to a case that requires further investigation. Please, if that i the case, let us know and send us:

This information helps our team review the case, reproduce the issue, and identify the cause.