How to get a good Integrated experience

Download the full integration guide and operations manual

Here are some of the common issues we see when integrating and how you can fix them to get a better experience.

Get Your SKUs aligned

The most important thing about managing products in IDA Connect is practicing good SKU Hygiene.

IDA Connect uses SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit Identifiers) to identify and match your products and product variants.

If there are problems with your SKUs, IDA Connect will not be able to match your products and the sync may not work properly.

You should also disable old and unused products in your sales channels (see 2.5 Old/Unused Products)

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.

Disable 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.

Check Your Dashboard and Email Every Day

Check your email inbox every day. We send emails if we detect an error with an order. Emails are sent to the email you signed up with, by default. You can change or add email addresses in your Account settings (‘Notification recipients’).

If there are any problems, you will see an error message in the Workflow status part of your dashboard.

Have a Manual Process

It’s important that you have a backup system for when things go wrong.

Most of the time, if a sync encounters a problem such as a time-out, it will process normally on the next sync cycle and complete properly. However, on rare occasions, IDA Connect may not be able to complete a sync or process an order properly.

If IDA Connect has been unable to complete a sync, you will be notified by email and you may have to complete the process manually.

You must have a manual process on standby so you can update a fulfilment status and/or stock levels if necessary.