We are pleased to announce the launch of API support for account-level tax & shipping for the
Google Content API for Shopping v2. Previously, this was only available on the
Merchant Center UI. This API feature will match the configuration options available in the UI.
This launch enables you to programmatically specify default tax and shipping rules that apply to all products within an account through the
Accountshipping and
Accounttax services. Specifically, the account-level tax and shipping rules apply to all products, but can be overridden by item-level tax and shipping settings, which are in the
Products service. Note that products' taxes and the Accounttax service are only applicable to products targeting the US.
The shipping settings allow you to set-up different shipping services using calculation methods ranging from flat rate to carrier-based rates, and you can use rate tables or decision trees to specify conditions on price, weight, and delivery location. Please see our
guide and reference documentation:
Accountshipping service,
Accounttax service, which will help you get up and running with these new services.
The second addition is new date fields that many have asked for. The
Productstatuses service in v2 of the API has 3 new fields:
creationDate: the date that a product was first inserted into the Merchant Center.lastUpdateDate: the date that the product was last updated. This may be the same as the creationDate. It also reflects updates from Inventory service.googleExpirationDate: the date that your product will expire in Google Shopping. By default, products usually expire after 30 days of no updates.
Also, the
Products service contains an
expirationDate field. This field represents the date as submitted by the merchant. The field is optional, and can be useful for setting an expiration date that is closer than 30 days away.
Another use case of
expirationDate is for products you wish to expire later than 30 days away; for example, 40 days away. As you continue to resubmit the product, this date will remain unchanged, and the product will not expire until the
expirationDate is reached. Remember that if you don’t resubmit a product within a 30-day window, it will automatically expire, regardless of what date you set in
expirationDate. There is no equivalent v1 field to
expirationDate.
On that note, please be aware that these new features are not available in v1, which is deprecated and will be
sunset at the end of February 2015.
We hope these new features will simplify your process for configuring tax and shipping settings, and clarify your product expiration dates. As always, feel free to reach out on the
developer forums if you have any questions.
—Yufeng Guo, Shopping Developer Relations
