Dealer Import - First Step - Receiving a Dealer Feed

Dealer Import - First Step - Receiving a Dealer Feed

1.       Identify the Inventory Management Company – ask the dealer who they use for an inventory management company.  Note: this is called a “Data Provider” in MarketGrabber.

2.       Get Permission – you may need to get permission from the dealer for the inventory management company to send you the dealer’s listings.  Ask the dealer about this and how to go about it.

3.       Create a Location to Receive Data - Setup an FTP Account on Your Website Hosting Server

a.       If Your Hosting is Through MarketGrabber

                                                               i.      Contact MarketGrabber and ask to setup an FTP account for the Data Provider (Inventory Management Company). 

                                                             ii.      MarketGrabber will send you FTP access information which you should email to the Data Provider (Inventory Management Company). 

                                                           iii.      Ask the Data Provider when you can expect to see your first feed of data
NOTE: most inventory management companies send their data feeds as a CSV file.  You can download and open this file in Excel and other spreadsheets to see the data that has been sent to your site.

b.       If Your Hosting is Not Through MarketGrabber

                                                               i.      Create a sub-folder for the data provider in the /upload folder of your website, such as /upload/DATAPROVIDERNAME replacing “DATAPROVIDERNAME” with the name of the inventory management company.

                                                             ii.      Setup an FTP account for the Data Provider (Inventory Management Company).  If you need assistance creating an FTP account, contact your hosting provider.
The FTP account should be created to go directly to the /upload/DATAPROVIDERNAME folder in your website after login.

                                                           iii.      Provide the FTP access information to the Data Provider – FTP server address, FTP username, FTP password.

                                                           iv.      Ask the Data Provider when you can expect to see your first feed of data
NOTE: most inventory management companies send their data feeds as a CSV file.  You can download and open this file in Excel and other spreadsheets to see the data that has been sent to your site.

4.       Check for Data – login to your website using FTP (note we recommend using FileZilla client if you do not currently have an FTP program).  Navigate to the /upload/DATAPROVIDERNAME folder.  If you have any files in the folder, then you’ve received your first data feed!

5.       Contact MarketGrabber for Next Steps – which involves “mapping” the feed data to your site.

Note: if you have many dealers in your area it is very likely that multiple dealers use the same inventory management company.  Once you have a feed setup for an inventory management company, the process gets easier!  The setup in MarketGrabber to be able to receive data from an inventory management company only needs to be done one time.