Sometimes it's necessary to use different SKUs for selling and fulfillment. Pipe17 supports this via a feature called SKU Mapping.
In this article
Overview
SKU Mapping is a linking of two SKUs as being equivalent for the purposes of orders, fulfillments or inventory. It is useful when:
- the SKU you stock (inventory) is sold under a different SKU.
- the SKU you sell has to be stocked and inventoried as different SKUs in various marketplaces, locations, and/or fulfillment providers
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. |
Note you can also use bundles to achieve the same effect if the stocking SKU to be mapped to the Pipe17 SKU is the same across all fulfillment channels
A mapping is an association of two SKUs. For orders when the first SKU is encountered by Pipe17 it is transitioned into the second SKU. For inventory and fulfillments, the mapping is reversed; when the second SKU is encountered by Pipe17 it is turned into the first one. For selling and ERP Ecom integrations, the first SKU is the SKU in the selling application and the second SKU is the Pipe17 SKU. For fulfillment integrations the first SKU is the Pipe17 SKU and the second one is the SKU in the fulfillment channel.
Create a mapping
- Open the integration for which the SKU in Pipe17 and the SKU in the integrated software need to be different
- Look for a setting that has the keyword "Mapping". There are two types, single line text boxes and Json. Below is an example of the simple text box:
- If the integration setting provides a single line text box then you 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 above taken from the Amazon MCF Integration, B7 is the Pipe17 SKU and CANB7 is the MCF SKU for the Canada marketplace.
- If setting is multiline 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
We are working on a feature to administrate SKU mappings via the product page and manage multiple SKU Mappings via CSV import. Contact Support for timing on this feature
Validate
If you want to see validate the effect of SKU mapping open the inventory SKU we are pulling or pushing in the other application and ensure the quanties for two the SKUs are the same.