Categories and Smart Rules

Organize your catalog into folders and give each one Smart Rules: publish defaults, AI instructions, margin markup and per-channel syndication.

Your categories are your own

The Categories page organizes your catalog into folders — imports create them automatically from your feed's category paths (and marketplace pulls land in an "Imported from Amazon"-style folder), and you can add, rename or delete folders in the tree on the left. These folders are internal organization: the marketplace category a product is listed under is chosen during AI classification (or on the product itself), not here.

What makes the page powerful is the right-hand pane: select a folder and configure its Smart Rules — "Smart Rules apply to every product in this folder and its subfolders. A subfolder inherits these values and can override them with its own."

The four Smart Rule sections

• Marketplace Defaults — filled onto products at publish when the product doesn't set the value itself (an explicit product value always wins): Condition, Handling Time, plus Amazon's Fulfillment Channel and Shipping Template and eBay's payment / return / fulfillment Business Policies for the marketplaces you have connected.
• AI Processing Instructions — free-text guidance that steers AI attribute extraction for products imported into the folder (e.g. "Always convert US shoe sizes to UK sizes"). Applies to rows processed after saving; re-run a row from Review to re-process it.
• Margin Markup — baseline pricing: a product published from the folder with a Cost but no explicit Price gets Price = Cost × (1 + markup); repricing rules take over from there. Apply to folder now recalculates prices from cost for the folder's existing products — it overwrites current prices and pushes the update, and works through large folders in batches of 500 per run.
• Channel Syndication — per-marketplace toggles controlling where the folder's products are allowed to be published. Turning a channel off holds back new publishes only — live listings stay up. A block set on a parent folder can't be re-enabled from a subfolder.

How inheritance behaves

Rules resolve deepest wins: a subfolder's own value overrides its ancestors, and an unset field shows the inherited value as a dimmed hint ("Inherits from …"). To fall back to the parent's value, simply clear the field and save. The pane's product counter shows the rule's reach, with a View Products in Inventory shortcut.

Tree housekeeping

Folders with products or subfolders can't be deleted until they're empty ("Please remove all child items"), and the root folder can't be removed. Save your rule edits with Save Smart Rules — Channel Syndication toggles apply instantly.