Price Promotions let you run a temporary sale price on an item — for one sales channel or all of them — without changing its regular price. Use this for a flash sale, a seasonal markdown, or any limited-time discount. You can set one up by hand on a single item, or schedule many at once with a spreadsheet import.

Before you start: an item needs a base price before you can add a promotion to it. If it doesn’t have one yet, set it first on the item’s Pricing tab (see How to Update Pricing – Step-by-Step for Manual and Bulk Uploads) — otherwise both the form below and the bulk import will fail with “no pricing_item found.” Promotions are set per item variant; a product (group) has no Pricing tab of its own.

Add a promotion to one item

Use this for a single item, or your very first promotion.

In the sidebar, under CATALOG, click Items.
Find the item (searching by SKU is quickest) and click the eye icon to open it.
Click the Pricing tab.
In the Promotional Prices section, click + Add promotional price.
Fill in Subscription (the sales channel this promotion applies to), Price (the sale price), and the Start Date and End Date.
Click Add.

Tip: promotion dates always run on Pacific Standard Time (PST) — a fixed Pacific offset that does not shift for daylight saving, no matter what time zone the rest of your account uses.

Add promotions in bulk

Bulk import is faster for seasonal sales or markdowns across many SKUs. For the general mechanics of imports and exports, see Using the Import Feature: How to Import Product Data into Acenda and Using the Export Feature: How to Export Data from Acenda.

Step 1: Export the template

In the sidebar, under DATA TRANSFERS, click Exports.
Set Export Type to Promotion and click Export.
When the file appears under Generated Files, download it.

Step 2: Prepare the file

Save the file as .xlsx or UTF-8 CSV — older .xls files aren’t accepted. The Export screen marks XLSX as “Experimental”; it still works, it’s just a newer option. If your spreadsheet tool only offers XLSM, save it as .xlsx first. Only the first sheet of the file is read, so keep all your rows on sheet one.
Delete the five record-history columns at the start of the export — id, created_at, created_by, updated_at and updated_by. Acenda matches each row by SKU, so you don’t need them.
Keep and fill in: sku, subscription_id, date_start, date_end, price.amount and price.currency.

What goes in each column:

sku: the item’s SKU, exactly as it appears in Acenda.
subscription_id: the sales channel’s Subscription ID, found under CHANNELS > Integrations. Leave it blank to apply the promotion to every channel the item is listed on. Acenda doesn’t check this ID against your channels during import, so double-check it — a mistyped ID will quietly save a promotion that no channel ever sees.
date_start and date_end: use yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss in Pacific Standard Time, for example 2026-12-01 20:00:00.
price.amount: the numeric sale price only — no currency symbol.
price.currency: the three-letter currency code, for example USD.

Step 3: Import the file

In the sidebar, under DATA TRANSFERS, click Imports, then + New Import.
Set Import Type to Promotion and upload your file.
Under Import options, keep Overwrite any current records that have the same ID checked if you’re updating promotions you’ve already imported.
Click Start Import.

Change or remove a promotion

Manually: open the item’s Pricing tab, find the promotion in the Promotional Prices section, and click Delete.
By import: you can’t delete a promotion through an import. Instead, re-import a row for the same SKU and Subscription ID with dates that overlap the existing promotion, and it replaces that promotion rather than creating a duplicate. Rows with dates that don’t overlap are kept as separate promotions, so you can schedule several upcoming sales on the same item at once.
Avoid having two promotions both live at the same time on the same item and channel — Acenda doesn’t guarantee which price wins if that happens. Delete the one you don’t want before its start date arrives.

Check that it’s live

Acenda saves a new promotion as soon as you add it or the import finishes, but each sales channel updates its own listing on its own schedule — some refresh within minutes, others can take longer. A promotion is only sent to channels where the item is mapped and listed.

In the sidebar, under CATALOG, click Items.
Open the item and check its Pricing tab — the Promotional Prices section should show your price and dates.
For channels that log catalog updates, such as Target Plus, Walmart, TikTok Shop and Mirakl marketplaces, check Tracking Marketplace Updates with Channel Events to confirm the price update was sent.

A promotion can exist alongside a channel-specific custom price (see How to Update Pricing – Step-by-Step for Manual and Bulk Uploads) on the same item. While a promotion is live, it overrides both the custom price and the base price for that channel. Once it ends, the price automatically falls back to the custom price (if there is one) or the base price — the channel’s next scheduled update picks this up on its own, with no action needed from you.

Troubleshooting / FAQ

The promotion isn’t showing on the marketplace: confirm the current time falls inside the Start and End dates (remember these are Pacific Standard Time), that the item is mapped and listed on that channel, and give it time for the channel’s own update schedule.
Import error “no pricing_item found”: the item has no base price yet, or the SKU doesn’t match an item in Acenda. Set a base price on the item’s Pricing tab, then import again.
The promotion applied to the wrong channel, or to none: check the subscription_id against CHANNELS > Integrations. Acenda doesn’t validate this ID during import, so a wrong one silently saves a promotion nothing picks up. Leave it blank to apply the promotion to every channel instead.
It started or ended at the wrong time: promotion dates always use Pacific Standard Time (PST), with no daylight-saving adjustment. Convert your local time to PST before entering it.
The price doesn’t match what you expect: a live promotion always takes priority over both the custom price and the base price for that channel. Once it ends, the custom price takes over if one exists; otherwise the base price applies.

Still stuck? Contact Acenda Support and tell us the SKU and the sales channel involved.

Keywords

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How to Set Up Price Promotions