- Selling on Walmart requires that a seller have items. The item represents the physical object that is for sale; this item may be shared by many sellers. The offer represents the terms under which a particular seller makes the item available; it includes things such as price, shipping methods and return policy.
- The published status refers to an item, and the life cycle status refers to an offer. For an item to be bought on Walmart.com, it must be in a PUBLISHED status and its offer must be ACTIVE.
- Published status is the status of an item in the ingestion process and these statuses can be:
- PUBLISHED - The item is visible on the site and available for sale.
- READY_TO_PUBLISH - The item is in final staging process prior to being published.
- IN_PROGRESS - The item is going through processing. An error could still occur at this point.
- UNPUBLISHED - The item has been made unavailable on Walmart.com because of back-end rules such as being without inventory for too long or problems with imagery.
- STAGE - Onboarding Tip: When an item is in "Stage" status, it will not show as "Published" until your Seller account is live.
- SYSTEM_PROBLEM - The item cannot be published. Usually an error of this type must be resolved with the assistance of Walmart Marketplace Support.
4. Life cycle status is the status of an offer in the overall life cycle, which can be further categorised as:
- ACTIVE - The offer of an item is current.
- RETIRED - The offer has moved past its expiration date (as set in the discontinueDate field). The item is not visible on Walmart.com. It can be made ACTIVE again by extending the expiration date into the future.
- ARCHIVED - The offer has been in RETIRED status for over a year. To return the offer to the ACTIVE status, upload the item as if you are uploading a net new item with a future end date. This will automatically be honored and publish the item.