Thread: Updating Inventory

We have many many items with many variants and attributes in our store. This makes manually updating inventory nearly impossible.

I was exploring the Import/Export Price List feature but I am wondering about how it works.

I set a product to track inventory by size and color.

When I export the price list to Excel, it lists each SKU and each variant, then adds up the total inventory for all attributes (Size and Color). It doesn't differentiate between different sizes and colors - it simply adds up all of those inventory levels and gives you a single number per variant.

For example:

We sell tongue rings.

They come in different gauges (separated by variant), in different sizes (5/16inch and 3/8inch), and different colors (Red, Blue, and Yellow).

Using the import feature, how are we able to tell the software that we have a quantity of 51 in stock for the 3/8 inch Red tongue ring, and we have 42 in stock for the 5/16 inch Blue tongue ring.

Right now it doesn't seem to care how many of which exact item are in stock -- Just the total number in stock for all sizes and colors. This doesn't seem to make much sense, as obviously, we're going to have a different number of Red items in stock than we have Blue items in stock, and we need to be able to keep track of these different numbers (hence the "track inventory by size and color")

How do we import inventory levels and tell the storefront exactly how many we have in stock for each size and color?

How do other stores handle inventory control when their items have multiple colors and sizes?

Bulk updates for multi-variant products should be done with WSI, not the price import. That tool just doesn't differentiate that 'finely'.

I have to agree with Scott. In our experience, our clients all use custom built applications that use WSI to do mass-inventory updates.

I use T-Hub from Atandra to update the stock from QuickBooks POS to the website. It's fast, easy and well worth the money. Get the advanced version that allows you to add items to the online store and it automagically adds all the attributes for the item and keeps track of them in inventory. I've been using it almost a year and there is no way I could manually keep track of everything if not for THub.

EG: 1 Items comes in 6 sizes and 3 different colors. Thub will allow you to add the item, with all variants to the website and keep track of the inventory of each item, color and size. It's an amazing tool and well worth the cost. But do go the advanced THub, it makes adding items so much faster. It takes about 1 minutes to add an item with 6 size and 3 color choices.

This only works with QB as far as I know.

We have a very complex inventory - sports memorabilia. The slightest change in a signature might affect the price, forcing us to create a new sku. When making updates and changes to the inventory, we have 5,000+ SKUs that share many of the same copy/paste snippets.

I tried importing a xls inventory spreadsheet of existing inventory, with the updated information included....hoping this would overwrite the current data for our inventory. However, new values didn't stick. (e.g. existing product description is ABC and I entered ABCDEF in the spreadsheet, then imported. Description still reads only ABC)

Someone mentioned we should try this via WSI. Unfortunately, we don't have an in-house developer to tackle this & I'm not inclined to learn it all from scratch. Would anyone here be able to recommend a solution that either exists or someone who can help solve this for us?

We're about to purchase T-HUB Advanced, however the inventory from QB (Pro at least) has limited variables and certainly can't be the master platform to modify inventory. So T-HUB will sync between ADNSF & QB, but we still need a bulk inventory modification method. Got any suggestions?

Sorry about not responding to this earlier. You could look at having something custom built with WSI. We do this kind of work all the time.

osdude - how does it match products from ASPDNSF to QB? We have products with variants. Each variant has a different Manufacturer Part Number. Could that be used to synch up with QB?

Originally Posted by ssgumby

osdude - how does it match products from ASPDNSF to QB? We have products with variants. Each variant has a different Manufacturer Part Number. Could that be used to synch up with QB?

In QB, each item is given an item number. Thub uses those item numbers to maintain inventory.

A Collot Shirt is available in green and red sizes S-XXL. Each size and color has its unique QB item number and that appears to be how Thub maintains the inventory.

I am not a developer at all and I don't really know the magic behind how it works, but each and every single item we have has a unique item number in QB and thub assigns that number as tracking. As a bonus, when an order is placed, the QB item number is on the order receipt. Makes life so much easier.