Akeneo Incremental Sync: Export Only Changed Products (Not Everything)

What incremental sync means in the Akeneo context

"Incremental sync" (also called delta export or differential sync) means: on each run, fetch only the data that changed since the previous run.

How Akeneo's updated_after filter enables delta exports

The Akeneo REST API's /products endpoint supports a search parameter that can filter by update timestamp:

# Fetch products updated after 2025-03-01T00:00:00Z
GET /api/rest/v1/products
  ?search={"updated":[{"operator":">","value":"2025-03-01T00:00:00Z"}]}
  &with_attribute_options=true
  &limit=100

# The response includes only products where:
#   product.updated > "2025-03-01T00:00:00Z"
# Newly created products are also included (created > timestamp)

The same filter works on the /product-models endpoint for fetching changed product model hierarchies.

State tracking: how SyncPIM remembers what changed

For incremental sync to work, you need to persist the timestamp of your last successful export between runs. Manual implementation:

# Python example: state tracking with a JSON file
import json
from datetime import datetime, timezone
from pathlib import Path

STATE_FILE = "sync_state.json"

def get_last_export_time():
    if Path(STATE_FILE).exists():
        state = json.loads(Path(STATE_FILE).read_text())
        return state.get("last_export")
    return None  # None = full export needed

def save_export_time(timestamp: str):
    Path(STATE_FILE).write_text(json.dumps({
        "last_export": timestamp
    }))

# Usage:
last_export = get_last_export_time()
run_start = datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat()

if last_export:
    products = fetch_products_updated_after(last_export)
    print(f"Incremental: fetched {len(products)} changed products")
else:
    products = fetch_all_products()
    print(f"Full export: fetched {len(products)} products")

upsert_products(products)
save_export_time(run_start)  # Save AFTER successful upsert

SyncPIM handles this automatically — no state file, no database table needed. Each configuration tracks its last successful run timestamp internally and uses it on the next scheduled or manual run.

Setting up scheduled incremental exports

The recommended production setup:

• •Daily incremental exports (Essential plan): sufficient for most B2B catalogs where products don't change minute-by-minute.
• •Hourly incremental exports (Professional plan): ideal for active e-commerce catalogs where pricing or stock changes frequently.
• •Weekly full export (any plan): run automatically once a week to catch any edge cases (deletions, orphaned records) that incremental sync might miss.

In SyncPIM, set the schedule in the configuration's "Job Mode" settings. See the job mode setup guide for the step-by-step UI walkthrough.

Troubleshooting: what if a product update is missed?