The Scenario
You are a catalog manager at a retailer. The merchandising team just handed you a taxonomy spreadsheet after a major catalog restructuring. It has 60 new product categories in one tab (category name in column A, parent category ID in column B) and 30 new manufacturers in another tab (manufacturer name in column A).
All of them need to be created in BaseLinker before the product import begins. The product team is waiting. If you do not have the categories and manufacturers in BaseLinker by end of day, the product import cannot start and the launch timeline slips.
The bad version:
- Open BaseLinker, navigate to inventory categories
- Click "Add category," type the name, select the parent
- Save, repeat 59 times
- Switch to manufacturers, click "Add manufacturer," type the name
- Repeat 29 more times
- Hour three. You are on category 38. The product manager sends a Slack message asking for an ETA. You do not reply.
The fast version is one prompt and the product team starts their import before you finish your next meeting.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads both tabs of the taxonomy sheet and creates all the categories and manufacturers in BaseLinker in one operation, so you never have to click through the inventory management UI.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create BaseLinker inventory categories from the Categories tab of this sheet: column A = category name, column B = parent category ID (blank for root). Add all 60 categories to catalog ID 11223344. Write the resulting BaseLinker category ID into column C for each row.
Then type a second prompt for the manufacturers:
For each row in the Manufacturers tab, add a BaseLinker manufacturer: column A = manufacturer name. Create all 30 manufacturers in catalog ID 11223344 and write the resulting manufacturer ID into column B.
Both operations run through the BaseLinker API. The category IDs and manufacturer IDs written back to the sheet are what the product import team needs to assign to each product during the next step.
What You Get
60 BaseLinker categories and 30 manufacturers, created in two prompts:
- Category IDs in column C of the Categories tab — ready for the product import mapping
- Manufacturer IDs in column B of the Manufacturers tab — same
- Parent-child hierarchy preserved — subcategories are nested correctly based on the parent category ID column
- Zero navigation in BaseLinker — every category and manufacturer created through the API
The IDs written back to the sheet are the cross-reference the product team needs. When they run the product import, they use the category IDs and manufacturer IDs from the taxonomy sheet to assign each product correctly.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Taxonomy sheets from merchandising teams are almost never perfectly structured. SheetXAI handles the edge cases inline.
When parent categories need to be created before child categories
The taxonomy sheet lists child categories before their parents in some rows. BaseLinker's API requires the parent to exist before the child can be created.
Create BaseLinker inventory categories from the Categories tab. Process root categories first (where column B is blank), then create subcategories using the parent category IDs from column B. If a parent ID in column B does not yet exist in BaseLinker, create the parent first. Write the resulting category ID into column C for each row.
When some category names contain duplicate entries
The merchandising team's spreadsheet was assembled from multiple sources and has duplicates.
Before creating categories in BaseLinker, deduplicate the Categories tab by category name. For any duplicate, keep only the first occurrence. Then create all unique categories in catalog ID 11223344 and write the resulting category ID into column C.
When manufacturer names have inconsistent capitalization
The spreadsheet has "Adidas," "adidas," and "ADIDAS" as separate rows.
Before creating manufacturers in BaseLinker, normalize the manufacturer names in column A of the Manufacturers tab: apply title case to all names and deduplicate. Then create all unique manufacturers in catalog ID 11223344 and write the resulting manufacturer ID into column B.
When you need to create categories, create manufacturers, validate existing products, and generate an import-ready mapping file in one pass
The product team wants a single mapping sheet that ties product SKUs to their new category IDs and manufacturer IDs before they start the import.
First, create all categories from the Categories tab in BaseLinker catalog ID 11223344, writing category IDs into column C. Second, create all manufacturers from the Manufacturers tab, writing manufacturer IDs into column B. Third, read the Products tab (column A = SKU, column B = category name, column C = manufacturer name). For each product row, look up the category ID and manufacturer ID from the tabs just created and write them into columns D and E. The result is a mapping sheet the product team can use for the import.
The pattern: the taxonomy creation and the product mapping happen in sequence, in the same session, without switching tools or waiting on another team.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your taxonomy spreadsheet, then ask it to create the categories and manufacturers in BaseLinker. The BaseLinker integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For a related workflow, see how to import a full product catalog into BaseLinker or the BaseLinker in Google Sheets overview.