SKU (Article Number)

This row in the supplier form is responsible for the SKU settings and everything related to them:

In the price list, the SKU can be any set of valid characters up to 64 bytes long. And in the product data, the SKU is in the "Data" tab - "SKU" field.

Note: One Cyrillic letter is 2 bytes.

The plugin searches for a product only by SKU, unless additional search criteria are specified:

The SKU must be unique for the entire store. If there are several products with the same SKUs in the store, the plugin will update only one of them, the rest will be ignored.

When executing the price list, if the plugin detects that a product with the same SKU is already in the store, it switches to update mode and updates the existing product without creating a new one.

However, there may be products with the same SKUs in the store, and in cases 1 and 2 (see the figure above), such products can be processed successfully:

1. The product is identified by SKU and supplier number at the same time. If several products with the same SKU are found, only the product that belongs to this supplier will be updated.
2. It is used only if the price list has a column with the manufacturer name, and the number of this column is written in the supplier's form in the "Manufacturer" field. Works similarly to method 1

There is another way to define one product with different SKUs, by setting the form for "Product".

Link the SKUs

If different suppliers have different SKUs for the same product, the plugin will create several identical products in the store. 

To avoid this, you can link all possible SKUs of one product to each other, so that any of these SKUs define the same product.

The product can be updated with different price lists from different suppliers. Different suppliers have different prices, which means that as a result, the product will receive the price that was in the last processed price list.

If you want to prevent the price change or make it conditional, you can use these settings:

"Price has decreased" - as a result of all suppliers' price lists processing, you will receive the lowest product price in the store.

How to link the SKUs

The price list should have two columns with SKUs and a column with the price(can be also a column with arbitrary numbers):

Supplier form settings:

In the fields "Product name" and "Price", write column number 2. Set this action:

Save the form. Open it and click "Start". Upload the file and run the program.

How to check the related SKUs? Open the Tools tab and choose this action:

Click "Start".

A list of related SKUs will be generated in admin/uploads/ex.xml on the server. Keep this file for further use.

You can link an unlimited number of SKUs, but each new SKU should be linked to the first one, i.e. to the SKU that is already in product data in admin.

To remove all linked SKUs you have to empty two tables in the database - suppler_sku and suppler_sku_description

SKU Prefix

If the supplier's SKUs are too short, for example, 1, 2, 3, 12, 54...then there is a good chance they will duplicate another vendor's SKUs.

To avoid this, it is recommended to add a prefix to the SKUs. Each supplier will have its own prefix.

In this case, when product 3 is added, in store it will be supp1-3. The plugin will add the prefix automatically during the price list processing.

Same for the product update:

• When the product with SKU "3" is found in the price list
• The product with SKU "supp1-3" will be updated.

If you want to add an SKU prefix to the products already added to the site, you can use the "Tools":

Replace product SKUs

You can replace the product SKU with another one using a specific price list xml file. To do this, the price list should have two columns with SKUs and a column with the price - a column with arbitrary numbers:

Supplier form settings:

In the "Product name" and "Price" fields, write column 2. Enable the action: "Do not update prices and quantities", save the supplier form, open it again and click Start, upload the file and continue.

As a result, the SKU from price list column 3 will replace the SKU in column 1.

Parsing.

You can parse the product SKU from a site.

For example, on the supplier's website page, the SKU is in the following piece of code:

and the link is in the price list column 9.

The supplier from settings should be:

SKU specifies: Option.

This setting is used when in your price list the SKU specifies an option. In this case the import/update will be applied to the product option.

The specific value of the Size option will be found - "XL" and its price and quantity will be updated.

Alternative SKU

In the "SKU" section there is a field for specifying an alternative SKU:

The plugin uses this SKU to search for a product not when the product was not found by the main SKU, but when the main SKU is missing in the price list: