Maxanet lets you bulk upload inventory descriptions from an Excel spreadsheet — also called spreadsheet import, mass upload, batch item upload, or bulk item import. You create blank placeholder items for your auction in the Maxanet Admin panel, download an Excel template that is pre-filled with those items' SKUs, add your descriptions (and optionally fees, taxes, and custom fields like Make/Model/VIN), then upload the completed sheet back to Maxanet. Maxanet matches each spreadsheet row to an existing item by SKU and fills in the content in bulk.

Important: the Excel bulk upload does not create new inventory items. It only fills in descriptions, fees, and custom fields for items that already exist in your auction. You must create blank placeholder items in Maxanet first (see Step 1 below) before the spreadsheet upload will work.

This article covers the complete Excel bulk upload workflow in Maxanet, the optional columns for item-level fees and custom attributes, common upload errors and how to fix them, and frequently asked questions about the bulk import process.

To use Maxanet's Excel bulk inventory upload you need an existing auction in your Maxanet Admin panel (create one under Auctions → Add Auction if you haven't yet), a rough count of how many items you plan to add, and a spreadsheet tool that can save .xlsx files — Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, and LibreOffice Calc all work. You do not need to know the exact item count in advance; it is fine to overshoot and delete unused blank items later, because Maxanet generates a unique SKU for every blank item up front and the upload can only fill in descriptions for items that already exist.

Open your auction in the Maxanet Admin panel and click the Items tab at the top of the auction dashboard. On the Items page, click the teal Lot Actions button and choose Create Inventory from the dropdown menu. Enter the number of blank placeholder items you want to create and confirm. Maxanet will immediately add that many placeholder items to your auction, each assigned its own unique SKU. These blank items are what the Excel upload will fill in later — without them there is nothing in the auction for the spreadsheet rows to match against.

Maxanet generates a bulk-upload Excel template that is specific to each auction and pre-filled with that auction's item SKUs. To download it, open your auction's Items tab in the Maxanet Admin panel, click the teal Lot Actions button, and choose Download Inventory in Excel Sheet from the dropdown. The file that downloads is your template for this specific auction only — the SKU column in the spreadsheet already matches the blank items you just created, and you should not edit or delete the SKU values.

Open the downloaded Excel file in your spreadsheet tool. The columns shown in red text in the header row are required and must be filled in for every row you want to upload. Item descriptions go in column O. The second sheet tab at the bottom of the workbook contains built-in instructions and a full column reference that you can consult while editing. When you are finished, save the file locally as an .xlsx file. Do not change the file format to CSV or xls, do not rename the sheet tabs, and do not edit the SKU column — Maxanet rejects rows with modified SKUs because it can no longer match them to existing blank items.

Return to the Items tab of your auction in the Maxanet Admin panel. Click the teal Lot Actions button again and choose Import Inventory Excel Sheet from the dropdown. Select the completed .xlsx file from your computer and confirm the upload. Maxanet matches each spreadsheet row to its corresponding blank inventory item by SKU and fills in the descriptions, fee codes, and custom field values you provided. You will see a confirmation message when the upload succeeds, or a specific error message listing which row numbers were rejected if any rows had problems so you can fix only those rows and re-upload.

Maxanet lets you attach fees, taxes, and buyer premiums directly to individual inventory items through the Excel bulk upload, instead of applying every fee at the auction level. To do this, first open Admin → Configurations → Global Fees in the Maxanet Admin panel and look at the third column of the fees list — each configured fee has a short code like PMP15Y10R3 or TXP8N0R2. Copy the codes of the fees you want to apply, then paste them into column I of your auction's downloaded Excel template, separated by a comma and a space, for example: PMP15Y10R3, TXP8N0R2. You can stack any number of fee codes on a single row, and different rows in the same spreadsheet can have completely different combinations of fees.

The Maxanet Excel bulk upload template reserves columns from column Q onward for custom field labels that you define yourself. These custom columns are how Maxanet handles structured item attributes like Make, Model, VIN, Mileage, Color, Year, Condition, or any other fields you want to display on the public bidder-facing auction pages. Rename the header row of columns Q, R, S, T, and so on to the labels you want (for example Make, Model, VIN#, Mileage, Color), then fill in the values in the rows below. When you upload the sheet, Maxanet displays each custom header and value as a labeled line inside the item description on the public auction page, like this:

There is no fixed limit on how many custom columns you can add — you can keep extending across columns V, W, X, Y, and beyond. If you run multiple similar auctions, save your filled-in sheet as a starter template so you do not have to re-type the custom headers every time.

Most Maxanet Excel bulk upload failures fall into a few common patterns:

If a Maxanet bulk upload partially fails, the error message lists the specific row numbers that were rejected so you can fix only those rows and re-upload the same sheet rather than starting over.

No. Maxanet's Excel bulk upload only fills in descriptions, fees, and custom fields for items that already exist in the auction. You must first create blank placeholder items using Lot Actions → Create Inventory in the Maxanet Admin panel before you can upload a spreadsheet. The Excel template is pre-populated with those blank items' SKUs, which the upload uses to match spreadsheet rows to auction items.

Yes. As long as the SKU column in the spreadsheet still matches items that exist in the auction, you can re-upload an edited version of the same sheet to overwrite descriptions, change fees, or add new custom field values. Uploading the same sheet multiple times does not create duplicate items — Maxanet matches by SKU and updates in place.

No. The Maxanet Excel bulk upload handles item descriptions, fees, and custom fields only — it does not upload photos. For bulk photo uploads use Maxanet's QR Code Bulk Upload or the Quick Photo Loader workflows instead, both of which are linked at the bottom of this article.

Not directly. Maxanet's bulk inventory upload requires the .xlsx format from the auction-specific template that you download from the Items tab. If your source data is in CSV, open the CSV file in Excel or Google Sheets, paste the values into the correct columns of Maxanet's downloaded Excel template (keeping the SKU column untouched), and save as .xlsx before uploading.

There is no hard documented limit. Maxanet clients regularly upload several hundred items in a single spreadsheet without issues. For very large auctions with thousands of items, the upload will take longer to process — Maxanet will show a confirmation message when it finishes.

Yes. Each row in the Maxanet Excel template has its own column I, so you can put different fee codes on different rows. Any row can have any combination of fees, taxes, and buyer premiums stacked in column I separated by a comma and a space.

Maxanet will reject any spreadsheet rows whose SKU does not match an existing blank inventory item in the auction. To recover, re-download a fresh Excel template for the auction (which will have the correct SKUs pre-filled), copy your edited descriptions and custom field values into the new template without modifying the SKU column, and re-upload.

No. The custom column headers defined in columns Q onward are displayed inside each item's public description as labeled text, not as structured filterable data. If you need attributes that bidders can filter or search on at the auction level, use Maxanet's built-in Category and Subcategory fields instead of custom columns.