The same product can be presented differently depending on the platform on which it is placed. Each of these trading platforms has its own unique rules, requirements, and features.
That is why it is important to establish an effective system for accounting and managing products, as well as their publications on all platforms where they are sold.
What is a product?
A product is a digital representation of the actual products you sell to customers. Products in KeyCRM have a price, description, photo, and specifications. This allows you to add products to orders, keep inventory records, and view analytics:
Products can also be divided into two types:
- with variants (properties, variations, etc.) - products that can exist in several variants (colors, sizes, volume, etc.). For example, a T-shirt in sizes S, M, L, etc.;
- without variants — for example, a specific guitar model that only comes in one color:
What is an SKU?
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit, which literally means a storage unit) - that is, it is a unique product code that can be used to identify the product, color, size, and other properties.
The SKU can be generated by an external accounting program or an online store engine. It can also be set manually, for example, in order - 0000001, 000002, or you can come up with a scheme for forming the article number. For example: [product ID]-[color]-[size], then you can understand what the product is by its SKU.
Product synchronization between systems occurs precisely by SKU!
For example, let's demonstrate the terminology on a T-shirt that comes in several sizes and colors:
What are publications?
Publications are presentations of your product on various platforms; they are automatically pulled into KeyCRM for sources that support this feature.
Publications can be deleted and updated, and they also have two important functions:
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they can be used to create products in KeyCRM;
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publications can be used to transfer current stocks to connected sources (websites, marketplaces).
For automatic transfer of stocks to sources, products and publications must be linked together.
If you have already created products in KeyCRM and do not want to transfer the stocks to the sources, you can ignore the publications; this will not affect the processing of orders in any way.
How the link between the product in the order and the catalog works
When synchronizing an order in KeyCRM, the system automatically checks whether there is a product with this SKU in the catalog. If there is, the product in the order is linked to the product in the catalog.
The order will display the following information about the product from the catalog:
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product name — this is useful if you sell products on foreign marketplaces. It will be much more convenient for managers to see a short name in their native language than a long and confusing name, for example, from Rozetka;
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product properties — the same logic as with the product name;
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wholesale price — allows you to see the cost of purchasing the ordered product in analytics and analyze finances more effectively;
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product warehouse — will only be displayed if warehouse accounting is activated and configured.
Displaying product names and properties in orders
This point is very important to understand, so let's describe it in more detail.
If you create products in the catalog with the same SKUs as the products in the source, the order will first display the name and properties of the products from the catalog.
The information in the source can always be viewed by hovering over the «i» icon:
If there are no products in the catalog with the same SKUs, then you will immediately see the name and properties of the products from the source.
