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Sync new products to Shopify in Draft status

  • 6 November 2023
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When we create new products in Acumatica, we do not want them to show as Active in Shopify until we have a chance to update images, tags, etc. in Shopify. (We handle all of that in Shopify, not in Acumatica.)

The connector automatically creates new products in Active status; is there a way to change this and set these products to Draft status when they are initially created? (Outside of creating a custom field or attribute and mapping to the Status field?)

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Best answer by KarthikGajendran 10 November 2023, 19:10

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Hi Mike! You can include in your product upload import scenario to adjust the “export to ecommerce” button to be unchecked. We do this by setting that value to 0. Then when you have made the appropriate adjustments, set the value to one and run the sync.

For items it created before you were ready, the only solution we found was to uncheck that box and manually delete the product in the backend of Shopify. Hope this helps!

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For further reference, this is what it looks like on the stock item page itself in Acumatica

Note that you can change the visibility and availability for individual stock items on an item by item basis if you have the need for that. We find that to be cumbersome for our use cases, but if you have limited number of SKUs it could be helpful to you

M
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Hi @jfarrell - The problem is we do need the item to export to Shopify, otherwise we can’t manage the images/tags/collections/etc.

However, we need to be able to do that while the product is in DRAFT status so a blank product page doesn’t show up on our website that is missing all of the relevant content.

Am I correct in thinking that the only way to accomplish this scenario is to use some sort of custom field or attribute and map it to the Status field in Shopify? Then essentially the Shopify status will always be controlled in Acumatica?

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Hi @jfarrell - The problem is we do need the item to export to Shopify, otherwise we can’t manage the images/tags/collections/etc.

Gotcha - so for reference, we chose to put everything into Acumatica to be our single source of truth and that is a viable option. I know that the sync can work both ways so you can set it up to manage collections/images/tags in Shopify if you’d like, but the functionality is there so you can manage these in Acumatica. 

I am pretty sure that if you have the item marked as “Set as unavailable” for the “availability status” under the eCommerce tab, it will show up as a draft item in Shopify (but haven’t tested that personally). I know for certain that if your “inventory status” on the general tab of the stock item is marked as “inactive” it will export to Shopify as draft status.

You can put the product description under the description tab, same as you would enter that in Shopify and it will export.

Product images can be uploaded in bulk with a simple python script via Acumatica’s API to the images section in the “Attributes” tab. In our experience this particular action did not count toward our ERP limit when using the API (which was super beneficial because we have a lot of images to import just for setting up purposes). Or if you have a limited number of photos you can drag them directly into the image section on the “Attributes” tab.

For the collections and tags - you can choose the Export as Product Tags option:

Our items have been exporting with the item class from Acumatica showing up as the Product Category in Shopify without doing anything to set that up. We haven’t configured any tags via Acumatica at this point, but this is what the little question mark pulls up

We just set up our collections in shopify to filter based on the product categories that exported. I’m sure there are other ways as well but that worked for us!

 

I don’t think you should have to do any custom mapping with the goal you mentioned. Let me know if anything I said here didn’t make sense and i’ll try to clarify

J
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Theoretically an alternative solution could be to set your store default to Invisible / Set as Unavailable and then to change the status on an item by item basis when you’re ready for it to be visible. Haven’t done any testing with that kind of set up in our company, but I think it’s a functional option.

M
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Thanks for the suggestions, @jfarrell. Unfortunately, we are using Template Items so that seems to complicate things even more.

From my testing, the “Availability Status” affects the “Track Qty” setting in Shopify, not the Status.

The visibility setting in Acumatica affects whether or not the product is visible to the Online Store channel in Shopify. I suppose this could be an alternative to the Draft/Active status; we would just set these to Invisible until we have them built out in Shopify, then we would change them to Visible in Acumatica to list them on the Online Store channel. I’ll need to do some testing on our end to see if that makes sense with our workflows.

Yuri Karpenko
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@mikeho , it’s pretty simple.

Template Items: set the Visibility in Acumatica to Invisible. This product will be created with Draft status in Shopify. For matrix items, visibility doesn’t matter - template item controls the status (Draft vs. Active)

Stock Items / Non Stock Items: set the Visibility in Acumatica to Invisible. The product will be Draft in Shopify.

Once you’re ready to change the product from Draft to Active, change the Visibility in Acumatica from Invisible to Visible or Featured (if you’re so inclined :))

Hope this helps.

Yuri Karpenko | DM me if you need help building e-Commerce for your business or connecting it to Acumatica ERP
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Hi @Yuri Karpenko - that doesn’t seem to be the case for me; I tested creating a new Template Item and set it to Invisible, and this is how the product was created in Shopify:
 

 

Status = Active, but it was not included in any sales channels.

Yuri Karpenko
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@mikeho , thanks for catching this. Yes, you’re right, setting visibility to Invisible removes an item from all sales channels, which is effectively what you need, I guess, unless, of course, you rely on the status of the product in Shopify to see which products require additional work.

Yuri Karpenko | DM me if you need help building e-Commerce for your business or connecting it to Acumatica ERP
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@Yuri Karpenko - yes, keeping a product as Draft prevents it from being listed on any sales channels, so that is the preferred method for us, but I will look into seeing if the Visible/Invisible settings are something we can work with.

KarthikGajendran
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@mikeho Did you try settings the items status as inactive and sync? You can try for both Template item and Matrix items. Let us know if it works in your version. 

Technical Product Manager- Retail Commerce
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Thank you, @KarthikGajendran! This is what I found regarding the Item Status field:

Template Item:

  • Inactive or No Sales = successfully set product status as Draft in Shopify

Matrix Item:

  • Inactive or No Sales = removed the matrix item altogether as a variant in Shopify
  • NOTE: If this is the only Matrix Item under the template then the sync fails because there must be at least one available/active Matrix Item for the sync to work.
KseniaBurtseva61
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Hi @mikeho, can you tell please which AC version do you use? 

Business Analyst - Retail Commerce
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Hi @KseniaBurtseva61 - we are on Build 23.109.0023

KseniaBurtseva61
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Hi @mikeho we are going to implement some changes according to this case in one of the future Acumatica versions - we will follow the template item status for matrix items as well. 

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Hi @KseniaBurtseva61 - I’m not sure I follow. From my testing, it looks to me like setting the Template item status to “Inactive” or “No Sales” successfully sets the product in Shopify to Draft. At least in our current build 23.109.0023.

Are you suggesting that will change in a future release?

KseniaBurtseva61
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@mikeho for now we have an issue where if you set “Inactive” or “No Sales” status for only matrix item (not for template itself) it will be removed from template as a variant in Shopify store, so we are going to follow the template item status for matrix items. 

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@KseniaBurtseva61 - Ah! I understand, yes, that would be great. Thanks!

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