Complete Guide to Updating Stock & Prices with Super Speedy Imports

January 29, 2026

This guide covers the most common use case: updating product stock levels and prices from a CSV file. Super Speedy Imports is optimized for this scenario—20,000 products can be updated in under 1 minute.

CSV Requirements

Your CSV needs just two things: 1. A unique identifier to match existing products (usually SKU) 2. The fields you want to update (stock, price, etc.)

Minimal CSV Example

SKU,Stock,Price
PROD-001,150,29.99
PROD-002,0,19.99
PROD-003,75,49.99

With Sale Prices

SKU,Stock,Regular Price,Sale Price
PROD-001,150,29.99,24.99
PROD-002,0,19.99,0
PROD-003,75,49.99,39.99

Setting Up the Import

Step 1: Upload Your CSV

  1. Go to Super Speedy > Super Speedy Imports in your WordPress admin
  2. Expand Upload Files and click Browse
  3. Upload your CSV file and the New Import section will open
  4. Name your import and choose a Post Type (e.g., Products)

If you already have a CSV file uploaded, expand New Import, choose the CSV file from the dropdown, name your import and choose the post type.

Step 2: Map the SKU Field

In the Main section: – Map SKU to your SKU column

This is how the importer matches CSV rows to existing products.

Step 3: Map Stock & Price Fields

For stock updates: – Map Stock Qty to your stock column

For price updates: – Map Regular Price to your price column – Map Sale Price to your sale price column (if applicable)

Step 4: Leave Everything Else Unmapped

Don’t map Product Title, Description, or other fields—they won’t be changed if left unmapped. Only mapped fields are updated.

Step 5: Choose the Update Import Mode

For a daily price/stock feed, set the Import mode in the Additional Options section to Update prices / postmeta only (prices_only). This is the cheapest update path: it runs only load-csv → match-existing → update-postmeta plus the cache flush, skipping the insert path, post-body updates, and image stages. It maps directly onto this use case — matching existing products by their unique identifier and writing the changed postmeta (_regular_price, _sale_price, _stock).

See Controlling which stages of an import actually run for the full list of presets and how to override them on a one-off CLI run.

Step 6: Save the Import

Click Save to store your configuration. Note the Import ID shown in the URL (e.g., import_id=5)—you’ll need this for CLI and scheduled imports.

Running the Import

From the Admin Interface

  1. Click Run Import
  2. Monitor progress in the log output
  3. Important: Flush your object cache after completion (see below)

Expected Performance

Products Approximate Time
1,000 ~3 seconds
5,000 ~15 seconds
20,000 ~1 minute
100,000 ~5 minutes

Times vary based on server performance and number of fields being updated.

Flushing the Object Cache

Critical: After updating stock and prices, you must flush your object cache for changes to appear on the frontend.

Why This Is Necessary

WooCommerce and WordPress cache product data in the object cache (Redis, Memcached, or similar). Without flushing, your site may display old prices and stock levels until the cache naturally expires.

Manual Flush

If using a caching plugin: – WP Redis: Go to Settings > Redis and click “Flush Cache” – Object Cache Pro: Dashboard widget or Settings > Object Cache Pro – W3 Total Cache: Performance > Dashboard > Empty All Caches – LiteSpeed Cache: LiteSpeed Cache > Toolbox > Purge All

CLI Flush

wp cache flush

Using the CLI

The CLI is the recommended way to run imports, especially for large datasets or automated workflows.

Basic Import Command

wp ssi <import_id>

Example:

wp ssi 5

Import with Cache Flush

Chain the commands to run the import and flush the cache in one go:

wp ssi 5 && wp cache flush

Using an Alternative CSV File

Use the --file parameter to run an import with a different CSV file:

wp ssi 5 --file="latest-stock.csv"

The file path is relative to wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/. The CSV must have the same column headers as the original.

Full Example Script

#!/bin/bash
cd /var/www/html

# Run the stock & price update import
wp ssi 5

# Flush object cache
wp cache flush

# Optional: Clear page cache if using a caching plugin
wp litespeed-purge all

echo "Import complete and caches flushed"

Downloading from FTP

If your stock/price file is provided by a supplier or ERP system via FTP, you can download it before running the import.

Using wget

wget -O /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/stock-update.csv \
    ftp://username:password@ftp.supplier.com/exports/stock.csv

Using curl

curl -o /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/stock-update.csv \
    ftp://username:password@ftp.supplier.com/exports/stock.csv

Using lftp (for more complex scenarios)

lftp -u username,password ftp.supplier.com -e "get /exports/stock.csv -o /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/stock-update.csv; quit"

SFTP Download

scp user@sftp.supplier.com:/exports/stock.csv \
    /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/stock-update.csv

Or using sftp with a password (via sshpass):

sshpass -p 'password' sftp user@sftp.supplier.com:/exports/stock.csv \
    /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/stock-update.csv

Complete Download + Import Script

#!/bin/bash

# Configuration
WP_PATH="/var/www/html"
CSV_FILE="stock-update.csv"
CSV_PATH="$WP_PATH/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/$CSV_FILE"
FTP_URL="ftp://username:password@ftp.supplier.com/exports/stock.csv"
IMPORT_ID=5

cd "$WP_PATH"

# Download latest file from FTP
echo "Downloading stock file from FTP..."
wget -q -O "$CSV_PATH" "$FTP_URL"

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "Error: Failed to download file from FTP"
    exit 1
fi

echo "Download complete. Running import..."

# Run the import with the downloaded file
wp ssi $IMPORT_ID --file="$CSV_FILE"

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "Error: Import failed"
    exit 1
fi

# Flush caches
echo "Flushing caches..."
wp cache flush

echo "Stock and price update complete!"

Save this as /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh and make it executable:

chmod +x /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh

Scheduling with Crontab

Automate your stock and price updates to run on a schedule using crontab.

Edit Crontab

crontab -e

Schedule Examples

Every hour:

0 * * * * /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh >> /var/log/stock-update.log 2>&1

Every 6 hours:

0 */6 * * * /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh >> /var/log/stock-update.log 2>&1

Daily at 6 AM:

0 6 * * * /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh >> /var/log/stock-update.log 2>&1

Twice daily (6 AM and 6 PM):

0 6,18 * * * /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh >> /var/log/stock-update.log 2>&1

Every 15 minutes (high-frequency stock updates):

*/15 * * * * /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh >> /var/log/stock-update.log 2>&1

Complete Crontab Script with Logging

Create a more robust script with timestamps and error handling:

#!/bin/bash

# /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh

# Configuration
WP_PATH="/var/www/html"
CSV_FILE="stock-update.csv"
CSV_PATH="$WP_PATH/wp-content/uploads/super-speedy-imports/$CSV_FILE"
FTP_URL="ftp://username:password@ftp.supplier.com/exports/stock.csv"
IMPORT_ID=5
LOG_FILE="/var/log/ssi-stock-update.log"

# Timestamp function
timestamp() {
    date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
}

cd "$WP_PATH"

echo "$(timestamp) - Starting stock update" >> "$LOG_FILE"

# Download file
wget -q -O "$CSV_PATH" "$FTP_URL"
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "$(timestamp) - ERROR: FTP download failed" >> "$LOG_FILE"
    exit 1
fi
echo "$(timestamp) - Downloaded CSV from FTP" >> "$LOG_FILE"

# Run import
wp ssi $IMPORT_ID --file="$CSV_FILE" >> "$LOG_FILE" 2>&1
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "$(timestamp) - ERROR: Import failed" >> "$LOG_FILE"
    exit 1
fi
echo "$(timestamp) - Import completed successfully" >> "$LOG_FILE"

# Flush cache
wp cache flush >> "$LOG_FILE" 2>&1
echo "$(timestamp) - Cache flushed" >> "$LOG_FILE"

echo "$(timestamp) - Stock update complete" >> "$LOG_FILE"
echo "---" >> "$LOG_FILE"

Monitoring the Log

View recent log entries:

tail -50 /var/log/ssi-stock-update.log

Watch the log in real-time:

tail -f /var/log/ssi-stock-update.log

Crontab with Email Notifications

To receive email notifications on errors, ensure your server has mail configured and add:

MAILTO=admin@yourstore.com
0 */6 * * * /home/user/scripts/update-stock.sh >> /var/log/stock-update.log 2>&1

Troubleshooting

Prices Not Updating on Frontend

  1. Check that you flushed the object cache
  2. Clear any page caching (LiteSpeed, Varnish, Cloudflare, etc.)
  3. Check browser cache (try incognito mode)

Products Not Matching

  1. Verify SKUs in your CSV match your stored SKUs. Whether case matters (ABC-123 vs abc-123) depends on your database collation — the default WordPress collation (utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci) is case-insensitive, so those match; a custom case-sensitive collation would treat them as different. When in doubt, normalise to one case in your CSV.
  2. Check for leading/trailing spaces in the SKU column (these are matched byte-for-byte and will prevent a match)

FTP Download Failing

  1. Test the FTP connection manually first
  2. Check firewall rules allow outbound FTP
  3. For passive FTP issues, try wget --passive-ftp

Cron Not Running

  1. Check cron is running: systemctl status cron
  2. Verify script permissions: chmod +x script.sh
  3. Test script manually first
  4. Check cron logs: grep CRON /var/log/syslog

Next Steps

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