Connecting Your SHOPLINE Products and SKUs to Sales Channels – SHOPLINE Help Center

Connecting products and SKUs helps streamline operations, improve efficiency, and help you reach a wider audience. When you sell the same products in both your SHOPLINE store and channel stores, you can establish a relationship between the products on both sides.

Product Auto Connection

When selling similar products across multiple channels, you can enhance efficiency by using the auto connection feature. Enabling this function allows for automatic linkage between SHOPLINE products and channel products. If the SKU numbers and names match exactly between SHOPLINE and the channel, the connection will be established automatically.

Enhanced Product Association Logic

We've upgraded the Multichannel Connect (MCC) feature with more robust product association logic, introducing new fields and rules for accurate matching. This enhanced logic strengthens product and SKU-level links between your SHOPLINE products and channel products, prioritizing Seller SKU, Barcode/EAN, and Product Name for precise matching.

How Auto Connection Works

The system attempts to link products and their variants (SKUs) based on the following rules:

Product-Level Matching (For Unconnected Products):
- The system first attempts to match products if the Seller SKU or Barcode/EAN information is identical between SHOPLINE and the channel.
- If that fails, a match will be attempted using the exact Product Name, ignoring language/translation differences.
SKU-Level Matching (For Already-Connected Products):
- If the product is already linked, the system will attempt to match variants (SKUs) using the SKU Code or Barcode/EAN.
- If that fails, the system will attempt to match SKUs using the SKU Style Name (variant option name), ignoring language differences.

For example:

SHOPLINE product A has 3 SKUs (1001/1002/1003).
Amazon's product B also has 3 SKUs (1001/1002/1003).

With auto connection turned on, products A and B will be connected automatically.

Enabling Auto Connection

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Settings.
Select Product Settings.
Toggle the Product auto connection.
In the pop-up window, click Turn on to enable product auto connection.

Notes:

If multiple SHOPLINE products meet the matching criteria, the system will prioritize based on the product status: Active > Inactive > Draft.
The auto connection runs every 2 hours starting at 0:00 (GMT+8).
Auto connection only applies to products that haven't been connected yet and won't affect those that are already connected. To modify connected products, you'll need to manually disconnect them before reconnecting. If a product is already connected but some SKUs aren't, the system will try to connect those unconnected SKUs again. However, if you've manually disconnected an SKU, it won't be reconnected during the auto connection process—you'll need to reconnect it manually.

Disabling Auto Connection

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Settings.
Select Product Settings.
Turn off the Product auto connection toggle.
In the pop-up window, click Turn off to disable product auto connection.

Once turned off, new auto connections will no longer be created. Existing product and SKU connections will remain unchanged.

Triggering Auto Connection Manually

You can manually trigger the auto connection process to connect products or SKUs before the scheduled auto connection time.

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Products.
Select the Channel products tab, and click More actions > Connect product in the upper-right corner.
The product connection process may take some time to complete. You can check the results later in the Task Center.

Note: Please ensure that the products you wish to connect are listed in both SHOPLINE and the channel, and the channel products have been synced into Multichannel Connect.

Product Manual Connection

If a product does not meet the auto connection criteria, you can manually select and connect it with SHOPLINE with the following steps:

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Products.
Select the Channel products tab, filter for Unconnected channel products, and click the Connect SHOPLINE Products icon.
Select the SHOPLINE products you wish to connect, and click Confirm.
View the connection results in the list under Connected SHOPLINE products column.

SKU Manual Connection

Shared inventory and price synchronization rely on configuring connections between SHOPLINE and channel SKUs. During the product connection process, the system will match SKUs based on their values. If the SKU values in SHOPLINE and the channel are identical, they will be connected. Please note that if either SHOPLINE or channel products have empty SKU values, the connection will fail. A single SHOPLINE SKU can be connected to multiple channel SKUs, but each channel SKU can only be connected to one SHOPLINE SKU.

If there are channel SKUs not connected to SHOPLINE SKUs, you can manually configure these connections.

Configure in Product Module

Scenario: When products are already connected, but the SKUs are not automatically connected due to empty SKU values.

Edit a Single Product

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Products.
In the Channel products tab, find the product marked with the You have unconnected SKUs message, and click the Edit icon to access the product details page.
On the product details page, navigate to the Selling information section, and click the Edit icon under Connected SHOPLINE SKU.
In the pop-up window, select the corresponding SHOPLINE SKU for each channel SKU, then click Confirm.

Edit Multiple Products

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Products.
In the Channel products tab, click Connect in the prompt to begin the bulk operation.
In the pop-up window, match the corresponding SHOPLINE SKUs with the channel SKUs, then click Confirm.

Note: If there are too many SKUs, only the first 200 will be displayed.

Configure in Inventory Module

Scenario: When products are not yet connected, but you want to enable SKU shared inventory.

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Inventory.
Find the SKU that need to be connected, and click the Connect channel SKU icon on the right.
Select the channel SKUs you want to connect, then click Confirm.

Notes:

Use the search or filter options at the top to find specific channel SKUs.
If no results are found, it may be because:
- All channel SKUs are already connected.
- The corresponding channel SKU is not connected, but the SKU has been deleted.

Disconnection

Disconnect Products

If a product connection is no longer applicable, you can manually disconnect it.

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Products.
In the Channel products tab, find the corresponding product and click the Disconnect icon.

Disconnect SKUs

If an existing SKU connection is no longer applicable, you can manually disconnect it.

For products where the SKU is connected to a SHOPLINE product:

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Products
In the Channel products tab, find the corresponding channel product, and click the Edit icon to access the product details page
On the product details page, navigate to the Selling information section, and you can manually disconnect the SKU under the SKU details section.

For products where the SKU is not connected to a SHOPLINE product:

Go to Apps > Multichannel Connect > Inventory.
In the SHOPLINE SKU tab, find the connected channel SKU, and click the Disconnect icon.

Notes:

After manually disconnecting an SKU, it will not be automatically reconnected during the auto connection process. To reconnect, you must do so manually.

After disconnecting an SKU, order imports for inventory deduction, shared inventory, and price synchronization will no longer be supported. Please proceed with caution.