Feedback & Important Feature Request

Dear VillaTheme Development Team,

First off, I’d like to express my sincere thanks to VillaTheme for creating the ChinaDS – Taobao Dropshipping for WooCommerce plugin. It’s a very useful tool, and I’ve been a purchased user for some time now. The plugin has significantly helped me with my Taobao dropshipping business.

I particularly appreciate the Import List functionality. The ability to set product prices using custom formulas (e.g., multiplying the original price, adding a fee, etc.) right from the import stage is extremely flexible and powerful. The exchange rate setting feature also works very well and accurately.

However, through deeper usage, I’ve noticed a couple of areas where improvements or additions could make the plugin even better. I would like to respectfully offer the following two suggestions:

1. Add Automatic Synchronization Scheduling:

Need: Currently, synchronizing products (price, stock, status) has to be done manually. It would be fantastic if the plugin included an option to set up an automatic synchronization schedule.

Proposal: Add a feature to configure the frequency of automatic synchronization, for example:

Sync once daily at a specific time.

Sync once weekly on a specific day/time.

Or other flexible options (e.g., every 6 hours, 12 hours…).

Benefit: This feature would save significant management time and ensure that product information on the WooCommerce site is always up-to-date without requiring frequent manual intervention.

2. Improve Price Synchronization Mechanism to Maintain Pricing Rules Set During Import:

Problem Description: This is my main difficulty. As mentioned, the Import feature allows me to set WooCommerce prices using custom formulas very effectively. However, when I later use the Sync Products feature, the current price synchronization mechanism overwrites the prices that were carefully calculated based on my initial formula. It no longer adheres to the pricing rules I established during import.

Specific Example:

Step 1 (Import & Price Setup – Works Well): Product A on Taobao has a regular price of 80 yuan and a sale price of 70 yuan. When I import it using ChinaDS, I use the pricing settings to apply my own formula, resulting in:

Regular Price: 800,000 VND

Sale Price: 500,000 VND
(This formula was successfully applied during import, which is great!)

Step 2 (Taobao Price Change): Later, the sale on Taobao for Product A ends, and the price becomes just 80 yuan.

Step 3 (Sync & Problem Occurs): When I click Sync, the plugin identifies the new price as 80 yuan. Instead of reapplying my original formula (which was used successfully during import) to this new 80 yuan price, the plugin simply takes the 80 yuan, converts it directly using the exchange rate (e.g., 80 * 3500 = 280,000 VND), and updates the Regular Price, possibly removing the Sale Price altogether. As a result, the 800,000 VND and 500,000 VND prices (generated from my import formula) are lost.

Desired Solution/Improvement Proposal:

I strongly wish that during synchronization, the plugin could “remember” and re-apply the pricing rule or markup percentage that I used during the import or the last manual edit of the product. The logic should mirror the powerful pricing rules available in the Import List.

More specifically: When the original Taobao price changes, the synchronization process should:

Option 1 (Preferred): Automatically recalculate the Regular Price and Sale Price in WooCommerce based on the formula/ratio previously applied to this specific product during import or edit. For example, if my initial formula effectively resulted in a 10x markup on the Taobao price (plus conversion), then when the Taobao price changes from 70 to 80 yuan, the sync should automatically update the WooCommerce prices based on that same rule applied to 80 yuan, not just the raw 80 yuan conversion.

Option 2 (Alternative): Provide an option in the sync settings allowing users to choose ‘Sync only stock/status, skip price updates’ or ‘Only update price if the value hasn’t been manually edited / formula-applied in WooCommerce’.

Rationale: The current price synchronization behavior undermines the effort put into setting initial prices using the plugin’s excellent Import feature. It creates an inconsistency where the import respects custom rules, but the sync ignores them. With this overwrite mechanism, every time a Taobao price changes, I have to go back into WooCommerce and manually re-enter the prices according to my formula for numerous products (currently around 500 for me). This is extremely time-consuming and significantly diminishes the automation benefits that a dropshipping plugin should provide.

I believe that adding an auto-sync schedule and, crucially, improving the price synchronization logic to respect the initially established formulas (making Sync consistent with Import) would greatly enhance the value of the ChinaDS plugin, solve a major pain point for users, and create consistency between the Import and Sync processes.

I sincerely hope the VillaTheme team will consider these suggestions. Thank you very much for your time, attention, and support.

Sincerely,