How to import products in bulk on Meku with CSV

Adding products one by one is fine for your first ten. It’s slow torture for your first two hundred. Meku’s CSV import lets you paste your catalogue from a spreadsheet — Excel, Google Sheets, or even a notebook someone transcribed once — and create the whole thing in a single upload.

What you need before you start

• Your product list with names and prices (the absolute minimum)
• A plan that supports the number of products you’re importing (Free is 10, paid plans go up to unlimited)
• Five minutes to prepare the spreadsheet

Step 1: Download the template

Open Products → Import CSV. The dialog has a Download template button — tap it and you get a products_import_template.csv with the right columns and three example rows. Open it in Excel or Google Sheets.

The columns are:

• name (required) — e.g. “Sukari ya Kawaida 1kg”
• price (required) — TZS integer, no commas, no decimal: 2500
• stock_quantity — current stock on the shelf
• description — short text
• category — must match a Meku category name exactly
• tags — comma-separated; wrap in quotes if multiple: "sweet, snack"
• low_stock_threshold — number; defaults to 10
• is_listed — true or false; controls storefront + marketplace visibility
• expiry_date — DD-MM-YYYY format (e.g. 31-12-2026); leave blank if no expiry

Step 2: Fill in your products

Paste your existing list into the template, one product per row. Don’t add columns Meku doesn’t recognise — they’ll be ignored. Don’t leave the name or price columns blank — those rows will fail.

If you’re not sure about a category, leave it blank. You can assign categories later in bulk from the Products page.

Tip: Quote your tags. breakfast, local without quotes becomes two separate columns when Excel saves the CSV. "breakfast, local" stays as a single tags field. The included template shows this.

Step 3: Upload and preview

Back on the Import dialog, tap the dotted box, choose your file, and Meku shows you the first five rows. Eyeball them — does the name look right? Is the price the actual number, not “TZS 2,500”? If anything looks off, fix the spreadsheet and re-upload.

Step 4: Import

Tap Import products. Meku processes the rows in one transaction and shows you three numbers:

• Created — new products added
• Updated — existing products (matched by SKU)
• Failed — rows that couldn’t be imported, with a per-row reason

Bad rows don’t stop good rows. If row 47 has a bad price, rows 46 and 48 still go through.

Step 5: Review the failures

If the result shows failures, scroll the errors list — each one tells you the row number, the field that failed, and what was wrong (“Price must be a non-negative number”, “Invalid date — use DD-MM-YYYY”, “Product limit reached”). Fix those rows in the spreadsheet and import only the fixed rows.

Common questions

Can I include photos? Not via CSV — images have to be uploaded one at a time through the product form. The CSV is for the catalogue skeleton; photos are a later pass.

What happens if I re-import the same file? The import is designed for one-time onboarding, not ongoing updates. For ongoing changes, edit products individually — using CSV to manage stock long-term defeats the purpose of having Meku in the first place.

Can I import more than 500 rows at once? No — 500 is the hard cap per upload. Split your catalogue into batches if you have more.

What to read next

• How to track stock on Meku without counting every day — what to do after your products are in.
• How to record supplier purchases on Meku — how to add stock when new deliveries arrive.
• How staff can use Meku without seeing your business data — your staff can sell imported products immediately.

Open merchant.meku.co.tz/products and tap Import CSV to start.