What should I do if my products are not updating?

Product updates may fail for several specific reasons. Check the following confirmed causes:

• Incorrect feed access details, such as an invalid FTP username or password. Also verify that the expected file is available before the feed runs; if an FTP file is uploaded after the scheduled run, the feed may report that the file does not exist.
• SKU mismatches, including extra characters like a leading apostrophe. Remove prefixes or adjust Smart Settings so the SKU in the feed matches the SKU in your store. Updates require a matching product identifier; exports do not require matching because they simply pull products from the store.
• Large numbers of unmatched variants, meaning the identifiers in your file (SKU, barcode, etc.) do not exist in your store. Only exact matches can be updated. Variants without SKUs cannot be matched to a supplier feed.
• Duplicate product identifiers: by default, only the first matching product is updated. Enable “Update duplicate products with the same product identifier” under Matching Column (Step 2) if all matching products should be updated.
• Variant or option values missing in your file. Blank option fields may cause new products or variants to be skipped.
• Filters excluding products unintentionally, such as vendor or product-tag filters, or filters that exclude rows with blank fields. Review Step 3: Filters and confirm that the affected products meet the filter criteria.
• Products absent from the feed are not updated. If “Strategy for setting out-of-stock inventory” is enabled, unmatched products may be set to quantity 0; use store-product filters to limit the products included and avoid affecting unrelated products.
• Heavy metafield updates slowing down processing and causing delays in hourly schedules. Large feeds can take several hours to complete; allow the process to finish before stopping it.
• Hitting your variant limit, which prevents updates until the limit is increased.
• System processing backlogs that temporarily place feeds in a queued state.
• API limitations or incomplete vendor data: if the vendor API exposes only part of its catalog, products missing from the API response cannot be updated. Confirm the expected catalog scope with the vendor.

Checking these areas usually resolves update failures. If issues persist, review a sample SKU, the feed logs, file timing, and the feed mapping configuration to identify mismatches.

Updated on: 22/07/2026