What is a SKU ?
SKU (pronounced “skew”), is short for stock keeping unit. It is used by businesses to identify and track inventory, or stock. A SKU is a unique code consisting of letters and numbers that identify characteristics about each and every product
The purpose of SKUs is to enable companies to process orders and more accurately account for every piece of their inventory
Companies issue their own unique SKU codes specific to the goods and services it sells. Two companies selling the same item, such as T-Shirts, would likely issue two different internal SKUs
If you stock & sell products that have variants E.g T-Shirt – Large , T-Shirt – Small etc. each of the variants will have their own unique SKU
In OCAT we use the word Code instead of SKU because products can be virtual or non-stock items. E.g a product which is a subscription isn’t really a stock keeping unit
The Code (aka SKU) should not contain spaces or special characters. Underscore and hyphen can be used
Variants
Variants are used at the point of sale to help shoppers select the product (SKU) they would like to purchase
Variant data for products have an attribute and options where the attribute is a characteristic which has multiple options. Here’s an example:-
Attribute: Size
Options: Small, Medium, Large
The OCAT App doesn’t currently support the creation of variants but that doesn’t mean you can’t use variants on an online shop. OCAT will still keep the prices, stock and product details up to date because each variant has a unique SKU (aka Code) & every SKU has pricing & inventory data
In some cases it is important to set up the variants on the shop before the first synchronization with OCAT. Please ask us for help / training on this
Groups
A product of type group is a virtual, non ‘stockable’ product that isn’t sold. It’s kind of like a category, and products that share a single attribute / characteristic are grouped within it
In the below example the product ‘Electric Vehicles’ with the code EFG8A26MK is a product of type group (aka the parent product) & the two other products are simple products within the group (child products)
The OCAT App does support grouped products
Why are there input boxes for things like colour & dimensions?
On the product details page there are text boxes where you can enter information like a product’s colour or dimensions. These are not attributes. They are there just for information purposes. To an extent this data it is actually superfluous information as the product’s name will already contain it :-
SKU : TSHIRT-BL-LRGE
Name : T-Shirt in blue – size large
Variants & Grouped products are currently in active development