When you import a listing from your Sales Channel(s) into the Products page in ChannelGrabber, the system runs some checks:
Is the listing being imported a variation listing?
Do the skus being imported exist together on another product entry in ChannelGrabber?
By default, ChannelGrabber will attempt to merge variation listings together, providing the skus being imported match those on an existing product entry on your Products page.
Single listings will create their own product entries by default. If you wish to merge single listings onto existing variation products, then we can help by enabling the relevant setting on your account.
Any skus that match will update stock in tandem, as the system considers them the same item. However, some customers like to have all their relevant skus under the same product entry in the system.
When two product entries are created in ChannelGrabber, the issue is most often due to a mismatch between the existing data and the listings being imported. The examples below explain three common instances where this occurs to help explain the logic and solution.
Example 1:
I have two listings that exist on my Sales Channels for t-shirts. One listing contains three red t-shirts of varying sizes, the other is for three blue t-shirts of varying sizes:
Listing 1:
SKU | Size | Colour |
RED_TEE_S | Small | Red |
RED_TEE_M | Medium | Red |
RED_TEE_L | Large | Red |
Listing 2:
SKU | Size | Colour |
BLUE_TEE_S | Small | Blue |
BLUE_TEE_M | Medium | Blue |
BLUE_TEE_L | Large | Blue |
When these listings are imported, they will each create their own product entry on the Products page in ChannelGrabber. This is because none of the skus above match with one another on the system.
Example 2:
In this example, I have two listings, with the second listing sharing some similarities to the first:
Listing 1:
SKU | Size | Colour |
RED_TEE_S | Small | Red |
RED_TEE_M | Medium | Red |
RED_TEE_L | Large | Red |
Listing 2:
SKU | Size | Colour |
RED_TEE_S | Small | Red |
BLUE_TEE_S | Small | Blue |
RED_TEE_M | Medium | Red |
BLUE_TEE_M | Medium | Blue |
In this scenario, the system will create individual product entries for each of these skus. Although sku: RED_TEE_S and RED_TEE_M exist on both entries, the two blue skus do not exist on the first entry. As they do not fully match they will not merge into a single entry.
Example 3:
In this example, I have imported listing 1 into ChannelGrabber already and the imported listing has skus that are present on the second listing.
Listing 1:
SKU | Size | Colour |
RED_TEE_S | Small | Red |
BLUE_TEE_S | Small | Blue |
RED_TEE_M | Medium | Red |
BLUE_TEE_M | Medium | Blue |
Listing 2:
SKU | Size | Colour |
RED_TEE_S | Small | Red |
BLUE_TEE_S | Small | Blue |
RED_TEE_M | Medium | Red |
BLUE_TEE_M | Medium | Blue |
RED_TEE_L | Large | Red |
BLUE_TEE_L | Large | Blue |
In this scenario, the system will create individual product entries for each of these listings. This is because I am trying to merge Listing 2 onto an existing product that does not have every sku on it already - because Listing 2 has RED_TEE_L and BLUE_TEE_L, it will create a new product entry.
In this scenario, we can instead delete both product entries from the Products page, and then import Listing 2, before importing Listing 1.
We can also manually create a variation product containing all skus and variations, before importing the two listings into CG.
The screenshot above shows a variation product that was created manually, which contains each of the skus mentioned above. If I were to create this product entry in ChannelGrabber and then import any of the listing examples mentioned above, the listings would merge onto this product entry.
This is because the product above exists in ChannelGrabber and contains all of the skus that are on these listings being imported.
The following guides explain how to create product entries in your Product page:
Please let us know if you have any issues or questions in relation to this at all!