Troubleshooting

The things that actually go wrong, what each one looks like on screen, and what to do. Almost all of them start in the same place: the supplier’s card on BossMage, StockBoss, which says how old your figures are and what happened last run.

My stock is not updating

Check the supplier card first. It says how old your figures are and what happened on the last run. That sentence usually names the problem outright.

Then, in order:

• Is it scheduled? A supplier set to Off will not fix itself, and the card says so.
• Did the last run get refused? A refused run writes nothing on purpose. See When it refuses a file.
• Is your credential still good? Suppliers revoke tokens, and passwords get changed. Press Settings on the card, paste a new one, save, then press Check now.
• Are the products connected? Stock only moves on products with a supplier code against them.

One product is not updating, the rest are fine

Almost always the connection. Either that product has no supplier code, or it has one that is not in your supplier’s file any more.

A code missing from today’s file leaves the product alone on purpose, rather than setting it to none. So a discontinued line quietly freezes at its last figure, which is correct, but does look like nothing is happening.

Check the product’s own edit screen for its connection.

It says my file could not be read

Read the sentence rather than the heading. There are several different causes and they need different fixes:

• A web page came back instead of data. Usually a credential that has expired, or an address that needs a sign in. The message points that way rather than at the file.
• It is a product list, not a stock file. It parsed fine and has codes in it, but no quantities. You probably have the wrong export.
• The separator was wrong. Rare, since it is detected, but a very unusual file can be read as one column. Look at the column preview.
• The address did not answer. Your supplier is down, or the address moved.

The quantities look like prices

Stop the supplier and check the column mapping.

This is the mistake worth catching early: a price column is exactly as numeric as a stock column, and only the heading separates them. Open the supplier’s settings and look at the three sample values under the quantity column. If they read like money, pick the right column and save.

Your figures will correct themselves on the next run.

Sizes are in the wrong order

New products built by StockBoss get their sizes ordered properly. Products you already had may have been created with WooCommerce’s alphabetical order, which gives 3XL, L, M, S, XL, XXL.

Building a style over an existing product applies the right order, and it never changes a size that already has an order set, so a deliberate order of yours is safe.

A hoodie weighs half a tonne

Your supplier publishes grams and your shop works in kilograms. StockBoss converts on import, so this is a product that was created some other way. Rebuild the style over it, or fix the weight unit and the product.

I built the same style twice and got two products

You should not. StockBoss finds an existing product by supplier and code and updates it in place.

If you do have two, the second was probably created some other way, or its supplier connection is missing so nothing matched. Check the connection on both and remove the one you do not want.

The range is empty or half filled

Filling a range is a background job over a large file, and it shows a progress bar while it runs.

• A refresh that stalled is detected after ten minutes of silence and says so, with a button to try again. This is most likely on a very quiet shop, where WordPress has nobody visiting to run scheduled work.
• A supplier with no product export has only the range folded from their stock file, which has codes, colourways and sizes but no names or photographs. That is expected. See Browse your supplier’s range.

A white screen when I open the catalogue

Almost always your host’s memory limit on a very large supplier. StockBoss reads files in slices specifically to avoid this, so if you are seeing it, tell us which supplier and how big their file is.

The connection worked and then stopped the same day

Check whether the token is shared with anything else. Suppliers cap requests, and two systems on one token can trip a limit that neither would hit alone. Some suppliers revoke a token for sustained polling rather than just refusing the request.

Nothing here matches

Take a screenshot of the supplier card and the history screen and send it to [email protected]. Those two between them say what was tried, what came back and what changed, which is almost always enough.