It is not possible for technical reasons to use batch input or any other mass data transfer procedure to transfer merchandise category objects to a SAP Retail system. A different mass date transfer procedure is, however, not planned. This is mainly because of the high level of detail in which a merchandise category hierarchy is maintained: reference articles and/or merchandise category articles have to be created and characteristics have to be defined for the merchandise category objects. All this has to be defined for each individual merchandise category in enough detail to ensure that single and generic articles can be created quickly and easily.

It is therefore impracticable to support batch input or similar transfer procedures.

It is, however, possible to transfer merchandise category objects and characteristics by using the SAP transport function in Customizing. However, objects are only copied from one SAP client to another SAP client in the Customizing transport function. This functionality is useful if you want to copy merchandise category objects from a project client to a production client, for example. For further information on transporting merchandise category hierarchies, please refer to the master data section in the Implementation Guide (IMG).