Suppliers with a named profile
Four wholesalers have a profile of their own. Pick the name, fill in what it asks for, and the rest is already known: their address, their file, their quirks.
| Supplier | What you need | Refreshed | Product range |
|---|---|---|---|
| PenCarrie | An API token you generate yourself, or their two files | Every 15 minutes | Yes, with photographs |
| Ralawise | Your website sign in, with API access switched on | Your schedule | No |
| BTC Activewear | An FTP address, username and password | Every 5 minutes | Folded from their codes |
| Prestige Leisure | An FTP address, username and password | Every hour | Folded from their codes |
Everyone else connects by their file, which works just as well. See Ways to connect a supplier.
PenCarrie
Section titled “PenCarrie”What you need: an API token, which you generate yourself.
Sign in to PenCarrie and go to My Account, then Account Settings, then API Access Tokens. Create a token, give it a name you will recognise, and paste it into StockBoss. That is the whole setup.
Nothing else is needed. Unlike their ordering system, this one does not need your server’s address approved first. That matters because most shops are on shared hosting and cannot promise a fixed address.
What you get: live stock for their whole range, and optionally the product range too, with names, brands, colour names, swatches, sizes, weights and photographs.
How often: every 15 minutes at most. That is their cap, not our politeness, and asking sooner comes back refused.
PenCarrie cap the published figure, so a well stocked line reads 500+ rather than a number. StockBoss reads that as at least 500 and stocks it accordingly. Treated as junk it would silently freeze exactly the lines you sell most of.
Without a token. Cannot get one, or would rather not put one in your website? PenCarrie still works. Send their stock file and their product export instead. Each half is chosen separately, so a token for the numbers and a saved file for the range is a perfectly ordinary setup.
Ralawise
Section titled “Ralawise”What you need: your ordinary Ralawise website sign in, and one thing from them.
Ralawise do not issue tokens. You sign in with the same username and password you use on their website. But API access has to be switched on for that sign in first. Ask for it through Marketing Hub, Web Data, Customer API on their website, and have your account number ready. They grant it per sign in, so a second person on the same account needs their own.
What you get: live stock for the ranges your shop is connected to.
How it works, and why it is different. Ralawise have no call that lists everything. Their inventory call takes one product range and answers about that one. So StockBoss turns your own shop into the questions: it asks about the ranges you actually sell, not their whole catalogue.
A product code’s first five characters are its range, so one request covers a whole range rather than one size. A shop with four hundred variations makes about a dozen requests, not four hundred. It does mean an update takes longer the more ranges you carry, which is worth knowing when you choose a schedule.
No product range. Ralawise publish no product export StockBoss can read, so there is no browsable catalogue for them and no building products from it. You can still connect products you already have.
The Ralawise connection is written from their published API reference and has not yet been run against a live trade account. It is complete and tested against their documented behaviour, including the awkward parts. If you are a Ralawise customer, we would like to hear how it goes.
BTC Activewear
Section titled “BTC Activewear”What you need: an FTP address, a username and a password.
Ask BTC to switch stock integration on for your account and they will send you all
three. The file is always at Web Data/stock_levels_stock_id_fully_quoted.csv, so
put that on the end of the address. Use ftps:// or sftp:// if that is what they
gave you.
Nothing else needs setting up. StockBoss already knows the product code is in the first column and the free stock in the second, so there are no columns to check.
How often: BTC refresh their file every five minutes, which makes them one of the freshest arrangements in the trade. Your schedule decides how much of that you take.
Like Ralawise, this connection is built from what BTC publish and has not yet run against a live trade account. If you are a BTC customer, we would like to hear how it goes.
Prestige Leisure
Section titled “Prestige Leisure”What you need: an FTP address, a username and a password.
Ask Prestige to set up stock access. They may also ask for your shop’s fixed address, so they can let it through. Have that ready if your host can give you one.
One thing to check. Unlike BTC, you tell StockBoss which column holds the product code and which holds the free stock. It reads the file and proposes both with real values beside them, so it is a glance rather than a job.
How often: Prestige refresh every hour.
Like Ralawise and BTC, this connection is built from what Prestige publish and has not yet run against a live trade account. If you are a customer, we would like to hear how it goes.
When a connection stops working
Section titled “When a connection stops working”Any of these can stop for ordinary reasons: a token revoked, a password changed, an account’s API access switched off again, an FTP password rotated.
You will be told. The supplier’s card says the figures are stale and how old they are, rather than only when it last tried, and an email goes out. See Health, history and alerts.
Fixing it is paste and press. The supplier card carries a Settings link straight to the form, and the form repeats the problem you came to fix. Save and test the connection runs the supplier again immediately. Leave the credential box empty to keep what is there, or paste a new one to replace it.
Some suppliers answer an expired credential with their sign-in page and a perfectly healthy 200 OK on it. StockBoss recognises a web page where stock should be, and refuses it. The message points at the likely fix, the credential, instead of complaining that the file could not be read.
Is my supplier going to be added?
Section titled “Is my supplier going to be added?”A named profile is convenience, not capability. It saves you choosing a shape and filling in an address, and that is all it saves. A supplier with no name in the list who publishes a file works exactly as well through a spreadsheet or a feed.
So if yours is missing, you are not waiting for anything. Connect them today by their file, and tell us who they are. Profiles are cheap to add, and we add them from what people actually buy from.