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Upload product list to Flexport

Pull from your internal product CSV, standardize field names and values to Flexport's required schema, and output a ready-to-upload file. No reformatting by hand.

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The prompt

I want to map our internal product catalog to Flexport's upload template format. Can you build me a flow that pulls from our CSV product files, standardizes field names and values to match Flexport's required schema, and outputs a ready-to-upload file?

Just copy and paste the prompt into a new Parabola flow to get started.

What Parabola builds

A workflow with six steps you can edit:

1. Pull the internal product catalog. CSV or Excel file from your ERP, Shopify, or a shared Google Sheet. The flow reads the file on each run.

2. Standardize field names. Your system calls it 'product_name.' Flexport expects 'Description.' Map every internal column to its Flexport counterpart in a single reference table. Update the table once when a field changes; the flow applies it everywhere.

3. Standardize field values. Country of origin codes, unit of measure abbreviations, HS codes, and packaging types all need to match Flexport's accepted values exactly. The flow normalizes each column against your reference list.

4. Validate required fields. Flag rows where a required Flexport field is blank or out of format before the file is exported. A validation column tells the team exactly which rows need attention before upload.

5. Format the output. Column order, data types, and file format match what Flexport expects on import. The output is ready to upload without any manual adjustment.

6. Export the file. Send to a shared folder, email attachment, or directly to your logistics team via Slack. Every run produces a clean, timestamped upload file.

Why teams stop doing this manually

Every product has an internal name in your catalog and a required format in Flexport's upload template. When those two do not match, uploads fail, records get rejected, and someone on the ops team spends their morning in a spreadsheet fixing country codes, stripping trailing spaces from SKUs, and recoding unit of measure values one by one.

The problem compounds when the catalog grows. A hundred SKUs is manageable once. A thousand SKUs across seasonal product drops, new supplier additions, and ongoing naming convention changes is a different job. The team that started doing it in an afternoon starts blocking it for a full day every cycle. When a new lane opens or a Flexport schema update changes a required field, the manual mapping starts over from scratch.

The bigger cost is the dependency it creates. One person knows the mapping rules. They have built a spreadsheet that reflects months of trial and error with Flexport's import tool. When that person is out, the upload waits. When a new product category arrives with different field conventions, the spreadsheet gets patched and the patches accumulate until nobody is sure which version is current.

How it works

Step 1. Paste the prompt.

Open Parabola, paste the prompt in section 2, and let it ask follow-up questions about your product catalog structure, which fields Flexport requires, and where the output file needs to land.

Step 2. Connect your data.

Your internal product CSV or ERP export, plus the Flexport schema reference as a lookup table. The flow reads both on each run.

Step 3. Run it when the catalog changes.

On demand for new product additions, on a schedule before any major Flexport upload cycle, or triggered when a new catalog export drops into a folder.

Related prompts

FAQ

Does this work if our product catalog lives in multiple files?

Yes. The flow can pull from multiple source files, union them into one dataset, apply the field mapping, and produce a single upload file. Add a pipeline per source file and the downstream steps stay the same.

How do we handle products where required Flexport fields are missing in our internal catalog?

The validation step flags those rows before export and tells the team exactly which field is blank or out of format. The rest of the catalog exports cleanly. The flagged rows wait for the team to fill in the missing data.

What if Flexport updates their upload template schema?

Update the field mapping table and the value standardization rules. The flow structure stays the same. No rebuilding required.

Can the flow handle multiple product categories with different field requirements?

Yes. Tag rows by category at the top of the flow, then apply category-specific mapping rules to each group. The output merges them back into one upload file.

How is this different from doing the mapping in Excel?

Excel works for a one-time mapping of a small catalog. It breaks when the catalog grows, the schema changes, or the person who built the spreadsheet is unavailable. The flow runs on a schedule, shows every mapping decision in the step history, and updates when you change a reference table.
Clean upload files, every time you touch the catalog.
Paste the prompt, point it at your product files and your Flexport schema, and let the mapping run without a spreadsheet in the middle.
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