Get Your SKUs aligned
IDA Connect matches products between sales channels using SKUs. If some of your products/variants have not been matched, it will be because of their SKUs.
For products/variants to be matched automatically, you must have your SKUs set up correctly.
Use the Unmatched screen in the IDA Connect Dashboard to see if all your items have been matched.
- Matched: Products/variants that IDA Connect has matched. IDA Connect can manage stock levels for matched products.
- Unmatched: Variants/products found on a sales channel that could not be matched to a product on the Shopify store. These items are unmanaged: IDA Connect will not sync orders or stock levels.
If there are problems with your SKUs, IDA Connect will not be able to match your products and the sync may not work properly.
SKU Hygiene
- SKUs must be unique. That means you must have a different SKU for every size and every colour (variant) of every product you stock.
- SKUs must be identical on each channel/store. Every product/variant must have exactly the same SKU in your sales channel as it does in your Shopify store.
- Check for duplicate SKUs and replace them with unique codes.
- Avoid having spaces at the beginning or end of SKUs.
Some issues we see with matching SKUs include having spaces in the SKU or using an underscore instead of a dash or vice versa.
If you are having problems getting your SKUs aligned, it might be worth using an app like Microsoft Excel to analyse your products and SKUs. You can export your lists from your systems and plug them into Excel to see what is happening.
You can also open your exported file in a plain text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). This helps identify when there are extra characters like spaces in your SKU.
Old/Unused Products
To maintain good performance, IDA Connect only syncs items that are active.
If you have a large number of historical products or you maintain a seasonal catalogue, you should deactivate all old/unused products instead of relying on a zero stock count. You can reactivate them at any time.
Go through your sales channels and make sure you deactivate any products that are not selling now. This keeps things moving fast and reduces the risk of delayed stock level updates.
Deleting products
If you delete or disable a product in Shopify you must also deactivate or delete it in your sales channel (e.g. The Iconic Seller Center).
If you do not do this, IDA Connect will continuously update the inventory with the last inventory it found in Shopify, which may result in oversells.
Changing SKUs
Changing the SKU code of a listed product/variant in Shopify can cause problems such as oversells if you do not also update the SKU in your sales channels.
Product reset
A product reset will delete all the internal linkages in IDA Connect then run full product sync and re-match all products across your channels.
Initiate a product reset from the Products section of the IDA Connect dashboard.
Your syncs will be paused during the reset, which takes up to 30 minutes.
You will be notified by email when the sync is completed.