Flat File Tools

Three tools that sit around the Amazon flat file: fixing titles in bulk before upload, checking the file is actually uploadable, and collecting Amazon's verdict after you upload it.

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Bulk title update

Amazon has enforced a 75-character cap on titles since July 2026. Most catalogues have dozens of titles over that line, and finding them one at a time is not work anyone should do.

1. Upload

Export a Category Listings Report from Seller Central and upload the .xlsx here. Rufusly parses it in your browser, so the file itself does not need to be uploaded anywhere before you have seen what is in it.

2. Preview

You get a count of how many titles are compliant and how many are not, and you can read the non-compliant ones before spending anything. If every title is already compliant, Rufusly says so and you can export the file unchanged rather than paying for a rewrite you do not need.

3. Rewrite and review

Rufusly rewrites only the non-compliant titles, one at a time, and shows the old and the new side by side. Each rewritten title costs one listing credit. On the free tier the run is capped at the first 10 rows.

Large catalogues process in background chunks and resume by themselves, so a big run does not die on a timeout. If an AI call fails, the credit for it is refunded.

4. Export

Download the file with the new titles written into the correct columns, ready to upload to Seller Central.

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The Pre-Upload Gate

Most flat file pain is learning about a mistake from Amazon's processing summary hours after you uploaded. The Pre-Upload Gate moves that discovery to before the upload.

It is a ten-step checklist that runs on the parsed file and returns one of two verdicts: ready to upload, or fix first with exactly what blocks it. There is no AI involved and it costs no credits. Steps come back as pass, fail, advisory, or skipped. A fail blocks the verdict. An advisory is a "are you sure" rather than a stop.

This feature is in early access. If you do not see it in your account yet, contact support to have it enabled.

What the ten steps check

1. Row count sanity. How many data rows, parents and children, are actually in the file. A file with no data rows fails here rather than uploading as a no-op.

2. Content matches approved copy. If the upload is linked to content a reviewer signed off, every field is compared character for character against what was approved. Anything that drifted is named by SKU and field. Skipped when no approved copy is linked.

3. Price anomalies. A price that is not a number, or is zero or negative, fails. A price under £10 or over £200 is raised as an advisory to confirm it is intentional, and so is a variation family whose prices spread by more than 20 percent from cheapest to dearest.

4. EAN and product ID. Child rows must carry an EAN of exactly 13 digits and nothing else, no two rows may share one, and parent rows must not carry a product ID at all.

5. Structure. Every child's parent SKU must actually be present in the file, children must have a variation theme, no SKU may appear on two rows, and no two SKUs may point at the same ASIN, which silently overwrites one listing with the other. Listing actions are checked against Amazon's accepted values. If the file both re-parents children and deletes their parent, the gate tells you to split it into two uploads and do the re-parenting first.

6. Title compliance. Titles over 75 characters, titles containing an en or em dash, a Title column and an Item Name column that disagree on the same row, and child titles that embed "Size UK X" when Amazon appends the size itself.

7. Previously failed fields. If you have given Rufusly the errors from a previous processing summary, it checks that each of those exact SKU and field pairs is now populated and valid, and warns if a SKU that previously failed has quietly dropped out of the file. Skipped when there are no prior errors to check against.

8. Required universal attributes. Product type and brand on every row. A missing product type rejects the whole row.

9. Value correctness. Fields with a fixed set of accepted values, listing action, fulfilment channel, country of origin, unit count type, condition, dangerous goods, and unit spellings, are checked against Amazon's current accepted values. A value Amazon has retired comes back as an advisory with what replaced it. A value Amazon never accepted comes back as a fail with the correct form. The report shows the date the accepted-value list was last verified.

10. En and em dash sweep. Every remaining field in the file, not just the title, checked for en and em dashes.

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Processing result tracking

Uploading to Seller Central is not the end of the job. Amazon takes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to process a file, and the answer arrives in a processing summary you have to go and fetch.

Rufusly records the submission and collects the outcome for you, however long Amazon takes. There are two paths, and Rufusly prefers the first:

• Where your Amazon account is connected, the file goes through Amazon's Feeds API and Rufusly polls for the result in the background until Amazon returns one. A feed Amazon never resolves is closed out rather than sitting as permanently in progress.
• Where the account cannot be connected, common for agencies working a client's account, the CaseFlow AI Chrome extension can capture the processing summary Amazon renders in your own Seller Central session and send it back to Rufusly, which parses the error codes into fixes. Nothing is fetched that you cannot already see yourself. This path is in early access. If you do not see it in your account yet, contact support to have it enabled.

Either way, the errors Amazon returns can be fed back into step 7 of the Pre-Upload Gate on the next attempt, so the same field cannot fail twice without you being told.