SKU Mapping is a linking of two SKUs as being equivalent for the purposes of orders, fulfillments or inventory. Once linked, we will interpret the mapped SKU as the primary SKU when passing through the mapped connector, or product channel.
You may want to consider SKU mapping when the the SKU you stock (inventory) is sold under a different SKU, or requires a different SKU during fulfillment.
For example, you want to sell your Toy Train via the SKU TRAIN-101 on Shopify. You stock it as TRAIN-101-FBA at your the US 3PL and TRAIN-101-CA at your Canada 3PL
In this article
Product Level SKU Mapping
In some cases, you may have a single product that is registered across multiple 3PL's, or Marketplaces but, does not have the same SKU. This could be because you have Regional variations that are indicated in the SKU, or because of specific restrictions on another platform.
In these cases, you are able to map each SKU as it appears in Pipe17 to the specific channel at the product level for a catalog you've ingested. If you are ingesting a catalog from multiple sources, you will have to perform this change for each product ingested. We highly suggest using a single primary catalog for the easiest implementation.
| Once ingested, you will just need to navigate to your product section from the main Admin. You will be able to click on any product from this section to begin mapping. |
Within the product page itself, we should see the primary SKU of what was ingested as we see here:
And scrolling below, we can see the specific channels that the SKU can be mapped to, as an example:
From this section we would then assume the primary SKU is P2004, and in the subsequent channels (such as eBay or Shopify), the SKU is different. If you have multiple of the same connectors for regional specific marketplaces - this can be done for multiple connectors as well (such as if you had 2 Shopify stores CA/USA).
To map the specific SKU, we would simply input it into the "Channel SKU". Once described, our system will then know how to interpret this SKU for that specific channel as it relates to the primary SKU, as we see here:
In this example, the SKU will still appear as P2004 in Pipe17 however, when we receive an order from Shopify, or eBay, it will come in as EBAY-P2004, or SHOP-P2004. Our system will then understand that this is the same as P2004, and account for it accordingly. We have not mapped it to any additional channels, such as a 3PL or ERP, which means it will be sent for fulfillment as P2004 instead of SHOP-P2004 but, will update Shopify once it has received the fulfillment information.
The mapping should be complete from there however, if the SKU does not match once mapped - you may see an exception for any orders, or fulfillment requests. In these instances, you can then verify and update the product again before re-running the order, or fulfillment request.
Connector level SKU Mapping
Connector level SKU mapping is very similar to our Product settings but, only exists within a few connectors such as Amazon MCF.
We can begin with Connector level mapping by first opening the integration for which SKU's need to be mapped (such as Amazon). Within the Connector itself, we will have a specific section for "Mapping", which should look like this within the "Shipping requests" portion of the Connector:
Our connector settings provides a single line text box where you can enter each pair of SKUs as a comma separated list with a colon ':' separating the first and second SKU in the pair. In the example below from the Amazon MCF Integration, B7 is the Pipe17 SKU and CANB7 is the MCF SKU for the Canada marketplace.
For some Connector, there is support for multiline SKU mapping and the example text starts with a brace '{' character then the text you enter needs to be in JSON format.
The list is of SKU pairs separated by colons and each pair is separated by a comma. However each SKU must be enclosed in double-quotes and the entire list must begin with an open brace '{' and close with an ending brace '}'. Here is an example
Comments
0 comments