This article talks about how to use the link report to link your products together so that they'll sync between your Point of Sale and your eCommerce platforms.
Overview
This article will go over what we mean by the term "linking" and how to use the Link Report. If you're not sure you should be linking or pushing, check out this article on whether you should be Linking or Pushing.
If you're running in to some trouble with linking items, check out the article on Link Report Troubleshooting or contact Support.
So, what does Linking mean?
Linking is the process of connecting products that exist on your Point of Sale and your eCommerce together so that they form a syncing relationship. This relationship will allow the products to "talk" to each other, informing the other platform if there has been sale (causing a decrement in the inventory count) or if a purchase order has been received for that product (causing an increment in the inventory count). In simple terms, it's like playing match-maker or Go Fish between your products to form a syncing relationship between Point of Sale and eCommerce for a particular item.
This relationship can be formed by matching the Title (name), SKU, or UPC number of the product. How we do that is by using our handy tool - the Link Report!
Why is Linking Important?
Linking is extremely important if you have inventory that resides on both your Point of Sale and your eCommerce platform. Rather than doing double data entry by manually changing your inventory counts when a sale is made, linking the products with SKU IQ allows for automatic decrements when sales are made! The reverse also works, so if you receive more inventory for a product, the new inventory count will be automatically communicated to the opposing platform. That means, if you make a sale on your eCommerce platform, your Point of Sale will receive a notice from SKU IQ to decrement the inventory in Real Time! Or, if you receive a purchase order for that product on your Point of Sale, your eCommerce platform will also be updated in Real Time with the new inventory available for sale.
Linking products is one of the ways to create a relationship between your Point of Sale and your eCommerce platform. Linking your items is like placing a mirror between your Point of Sale and eCommerce so that the correct inventory quantities are reflected on both sides. Without links, quantity changes will not be communicated between the two. Unlinked products also do not have the ability to sync product attribute data either! So if you have price syncing turned on, if you update the price for the product on your source of truth system, you won't have the update occur on the other side if the product isn't linked.
The Link Report
The Link Report is the tool we have embedded into SKU IQ to match products that already exist on your Point of Sale and eCommerce platforms. These products are the same item on both sides and can be matched by having the same Title, SKU# or UPC Code entered in on both platforms. These products must have the same structure on both sides, meaning that if there are singular items on your Point of Sale, but a variable set of items on your eCommerce, they cannot be matched.
💡 Quick Formatting Tips:
- If the product titles match, but the prices are different on your eCommerce versus your Point of Sale, matching will not occur
- If products do not have the exact same structure between the two platforms (meaning that a non-variable product is trying to be matched with a variable product), they will not match properly (the exception to the rule is for Clover and Lightspeed Retail R-Series Point of Sales and eCommerce platforms. If the items are structured as individual items on Clover or Lightspeed R-Series, they CAN match to all of our eCommerce partners by SKU Number!)
- There may be a difference in special characters between the two products that are preventing the match (eg. - _ ; :)
- There may be an alphanumeric mismatch between the two. While SKU IQ is capable of matching without paying attention to the case of letters, it is extremely sensitive to spelling
- Read more about how to format your data here.
How to Generate a Link Report
SKU IQ will automatically generate a Link Report for you once you've successfully connected your Point of Sale and eCommerce platforms and the import of products has completed. You may have seen one already while going through the initial setup of SKU IQ. If you skipped it, that's alright, we can generate a new one if need be! In order to generate a new Link Report, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the Link Report tab under the "Reports" section of the left hand navigation menu on the dashboard
2. You'll see a "Refresh Report" button underneath the top paragraphs on the right hand side. Click on the "Refresh Report" button to generate a new Link Report.
💡 Tip: If you have a lot of inventory to parse through, the generation of the Link Report may take a little while. Not to worry though! You don't have to sit and wait - we'll email you when the report has finished generating. Make sure that your email address is up to date and correct under your Account Page. (Click on your email address at the top right hand corner of the dashboard and select "Account" under the drop down.)
What do you do with the Link Report?
Since the Link Report is used to match products that exist on both the Point of Sale and the eCommerce platforms, how do you do that? Well, first you'll want to make sure that your inventory is correct on at least one of the platforms. The way that the Link Report works is that you will choose the Source of Truth or Primary System. This is only important for the linking process as both systems will be respected for the inventory quantity after the link has been created. The Source of Truth is the platform that has the most correct inventory quantity data. (Thus why we recommend you have your inventory counts in order first as the Linking event will overwrite the data on the secondary system for the inventory count.)
🚩A linking event cannot be reversed. 🚩
Make sure that you select the correct Source of Truth (Primary System) before performing the linking action. If you do not choose the correct source of truth, you will need to update the inventory on one platform to correct it. It is a good idea to back up your data on both platforms prior to performing link events.
To use the link report, follow these steps:
1. Navigate to the "Link Report" tab on the left hand side of the dashboard. This is under the "Reports" part of the navigation panel.
2. The Link Report should look similar to this:
Note: You may have different icons next to your items depending on your integrations. Each integration will display their respective icons next to the product that is associated with that platform. E.g. a product on Square will have the Square icon next to it; a product on Shopify will have the Shopify icon next to it; and so on.
If your Link Report looks like the following image, go back up to the section on generating a Link Report and generate a new Link Report.
3. You'll have the option to select which inventory quantity is correct - either your Point of Sale or your eCommerce. In the example below, you will notice that both the Point of Sale (Lightspeed) and the eCommerce (Wix) have the exact same quantity. This may not be the case for all merchants.
You will want to pick the inventory quantity that you know is correct - this is going to be your Source of Truth or Primary System. If you haven't done your inventory count yet, that is okay - you can update the inventory count on one of the platforms after you link. However, keep in mind that whatever inventory number you select WILL show up on your website.
When you are linking products, the only field that is overwritten is the inventory quantity - this is ideal for those merchants that have their products named differently on their Point of Sale versus their Website and are matching buy SKU.
4. If you know that your Point of Sale or eCommerce inventories are correct and you want to select all, you can click the respective button under Primary System to select all 100 items on the first page.
By clicking a primary system button, this will also automatically check all of the boxes for the items on that page.
🚨 NOTE: Selecting one of the primary system buttons will only select the first 100 items that can be linked. If you would like to link all of your items (if you have more than 100 to link) at once, please contact our support team to have them process a bulk link. (A bulk link allows us to link all of your products together on the backend so you don't have to go page-by-page.) You will need to let them know which platform to respect as the Primary System as well.
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Link Items.
6. A popup window will come up asking if you would like to link the items you have selected.
If you are sure you want to link the items, click on Link Items in the popup window. If you have questions, or aren't sure, contact Support so that we can answer any questions you may have.
7. Once you click on Link Items, the items you have selected will now form a syncing relationship we refer to as "Linked". The process can take up to two minutes per product to form that linked relationship. A whole page of 100 items can take approximately 30 minutes to finish linking. You can continue to link the remaining items, going page by page, or you can contact Support to have us perform a bulk link. (A bulk link allows us to link all of your products together on the back-end so you don't have to go page-by-page. Bulk links are available on paying subscription plans.)
8. You can see the products that are linked together by navigating to the Products page on the left hand side of the dashboard.
Use the Filter dropdown menu to select In-Store & Online.
Items that are linked together will have both the Point of Sale's and eCommerce's icons next to them as well as a blue icon of circular errors (AKA the Linked Icon).
