When an import fails or gets stuck
What each import state means, how long “working” is normal, what the reference number is for and when “Try again” fixes it.
By The AffCheck team · Updated
An import that never finishes is worse than one that fails, because a spinner does not tell you what to do. Every import in AffCheck ends in one of four things the screen can say.
The four states
| State | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Working | The rows are in and the check against your orders is running | Nothing; it is usually seconds |
| Slow | It has been working for more than ten minutes | Nothing is lost. Leave it; the page says so itself |
| Done | Finished, with rows, matched and flagged counts | Go to Review |
| Failed | It stopped, with a sentence and a reference | Read the sentence; usually "Try again" |
An import nobody ever picked up — the worker was restarting, the queue lost it — is marked failed after thirty minutes by a sweep that runs every ten. Nothing waits for ever.
What the sentences mean
The error you see is one plain sentence about what happened and what to do. It never contains a value from your file, a column name, a file name or a stack trace.
| Sentence | What went wrong |
|---|---|
| "We could not save every row of that import. Nothing was double-counted — import the same file again." | A batch of rows did not save |
| "Reading that file stopped before the end. Export it again from your network and import it once more." | Parsing died part-way through, in your browser |
| "We could not finish checking this import against your orders. Try again; if it keeps failing, send us the reference below." | The matcher exhausted its retries |
| "This import waited too long to be checked against your orders. Nothing is lost — try again." | Nothing picked the work up in time |
| "We could not save every order from that export." | A batch of Shopify orders did not save |
The commonest cause of the second one is a file that is not really a CSV: an Excel workbook renamed, or an export that was still being written when it was downloaded. Export it again from the network.
The reference number
A failed import shows Reference and a short id. That is the identifier of the error report we received. It contains nothing from your file — no row, no order, no code. Quoting it in an email is the fastest way for us to find exactly what happened, and it is the same reference our own monitoring shows, so nobody has to guess which failure you mean.
Try again
"Try again" clears the error and queues one more check against your orders. It is safe to click twice: a second click collapses into the same run rather than starting a parallel one.
It only helps when the rows actually arrived. An import whose rows never landed cannot be fixed by matching again, so it says so and asks for the file instead.
Nothing is double-counted
Re-importing the same file is always safe. Rows are matched on the network's transaction id, or on the order reference and date when the file has no id column, so a repeat updates what is there. Orders are matched on the order name. This is why every error sentence is happy to tell you to import the file again.
Still stuck
- The counts never move past "rows in". Matching runs in the background; if it has not started after a few minutes something is wrong on our side, not yours. Send us the reference.
- Everything imports but nothing is flagged. That is usually a coverage problem, not a failure: the orders export does not overlap the transactions. Check the coverage card on the Imports screen and re-export your orders for a wider range — see export your Shopify orders.
- The wrong file went in. Take it back: undo an import.
FAQ
Questions, answered
How long should an import take?
Seconds to a minute for most files. After ten minutes the screen says so itself, and an import nobody picked up is marked failed after thirty rather than spinning for ever.
Is it safe to import the same file again?
Yes. Rows are matched on the network’s transaction id, or on the order reference and date when the file has no id, so a repeat updates rows instead of adding them.
What is the reference in the error message?
The id of the error report we received. It contains no data from your file, and quoting it in an email lets us find exactly what happened.
Related
- Import a network export How the Imports screen reads a pending-transactions CSV in your browser, what it stores, and what happens when it asks you to match the columns.
- Undo an import you did not mean to run The wrong file, week or network: what undo deletes, what it keeps, the typed confirmation above 100 rows, and what happens to the review queue.
- Export your Shopify orders Where the Orders export lives in Shopify admin, which date range to pick, why the file can arrive by email, and which columns AffCheck reads.
- How AffCheck works, start to finish The cycle in four steps: export your Shopify orders, import your network’s pending transactions, review what is flagged, decline before the deadline.
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