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Guide to Settings: Categories

How to setup categories in Lister and connect them to your online marketplaces

Rain Gilbert avatar
Written by Rain Gilbert
Updated over a year ago

Overview

Categories in Lister connect to your Builder Templates and ensure your listings are published to the matching categories in eBay and Shopgoodwill. For example, Lister's “Antiques” category auto-picks the right category for Shopgoodwill and eBay.

Lister comes with over 500 mapped categories for your products. This guide shows how to add, configure, and set up additional categories to your Lister account.

Note: Selling on Shopify? Shopify categories do not need mapping to Lister. Configure Shopify using Shopify collections.


Table of Contents


How Categories and Templates Interact

Each product category connects to ONE builder template. A template can link to multiple categories, but an individual category can only be used with one template.

If many templates tie to a single category, only the most recently edited template will be used to create a listing for that category.

In the example below, a builder template for guitars is connected to the Basses, Acoustic, and Electric guitar categories in Shopgoodwill and eBay.

Example Builder template category mapping options

How to Find Category Settings in Lister

Category settings are in the admin section of Lister. Only admins and custom roles with access to category settings can view and edit these settings.

  1. Click the gear icon in the top right navigation menu of Lister to go to the admin page

  2. Click “Categories” under the “Products and Listings” section in the left menu

    Click the gear icon in Lister, then "Categories" to open your category settings page
  3. Category names are nested into subcategories. To expand or contract the category tree, click the up/down arrow box at the top of the page, or the plus sign next to a specific category tree

    Click the plus sign next to a category tree or the up/down arrow icon to expand the category tree

How to Add a New Category

  1. Add a new category by clicking the "New Category" button in the top right corner

  2. Scroll down to the bottom of your list and type in the new category you'd like to add, and hit enter on your keyboard

    Click the new category button to create a new category.
  3. Alternatively, add sub-categories by clicking on the plus sign next to the category you'd like to add a sub-category to, then enter the name of the new sub-category

  4. Click the green “Save” button in the top right corner
    Note: Once the category is saved, you’ll need to map it to your online marketplaces. Continue reading below for more details!

    Click the plus sign to make add a subcategory. Click Save to confirm the name.

How to Map Categories to Marketplaces

After the Lister category has been created, it needs to be mapped to each marketplace you want to sell that category on.

  1. Click the gear icon next to the name of the category

    Click the gear icon to edit a category
  2. Click. "Change" under the marketplace you want to map the category to

    Click "change" under a marketplace to being mapping
  3. Select the desired category from the marketplace category tree

  4. Toggle the “Listable” button to activate the category in Lister

  5. Click the green “Save” button in the bottom right corner of the pop-up window

    Select the deepest category into the category tree

💡 Operational Tip: Always map eBay categories as deep as possible into the eBay category tree. eBay categories must be mapped to the last category in the branch to list. The category tree box will be outlined in red when the selected category is not deep enough into eBay’s categories and will turn green once the selected category is at the end of the category branch.

If the eBay category is not at the end of the branch, you will see an error when creating eBay listings until a more specific category is selected:

Example error message in the Listing form when a category selection is not deep enough into eBay's category trees

How to Rearrange Categories

  1. Click the plus sign on the left of a category to see a drop-down list of its subcategories

  2. Rearrange products by clicking and holding down the gray box with three lines and moving it to the desired category tree

    Click and drag a category around your category tree from the three dashed lines to the left of the category name

How to Delete Categories

  1. Click on the trash icon next to the category you want to delete

  2. A pop-up will warn you if the category is tied to any templates or listing strategies. You will need to remove the category from any templates and listing strategies before you delete the category

    Image 9-13-2021 at 12.18 PM

Related Guides

Have questions? Reach out to us at support@uprightlabs.com or via chat anytime between 9am-6pm ET, Monday to Friday

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