Create products for supplier items you do not stock yet

Create missing products tells Everstock to create a Shopify product for a supplier item that has no match in your store. It is off by default. Everything it creates is a draft, and Everstock never publishes a product for you.

Turn it on

On the Connect a supplier page, tick Create missing products in the What syncs section. On a connection you already have, it is in the Variants & new products section of the connection page. Click Save in the Shopify admin save bar.

Creating products needs a price in your mapping, so nothing is created at 0.00. If no price is mapped, the checkbox is locked and says why. Map a price first. See Map your supplier fields to your store.

How Everstock decides to create

Everstock matches a supplier row to your store by barcode first, then SKU. A row whose key matches nothing is a new item.

Before it creates anything, Everstock takes a second, wider look. It checks both the row's barcode and its SKU against every variant in your store. It only creates the product when neither one is already there. This stops duplicates:

• If the SKU or barcode is already on one of your variants, nothing is created. The row goes to review with the message "already in your store under this SKU or barcode, so no product was created".
• If more than one of your variants has that SKU or barcode, nothing is created either, and the row says so. Everstock never guesses which one you meant.

A supplier row with no barcode and no SKU is never created. It goes to review. See What "For review" means.

What a created product looks like

A single supplier row becomes one product with one variant. It carries the SKU, the barcode and the starting stock from the feed.

Rows that belong together, like the sizes of one shirt, become one product with a variant for each row. It can have up to three options, such as Size and Colour. See Sync products with variants.

The status is always Draft, so nothing reaches your storefront until you check it and publish it yourself.

The starting stock is the feed's quantity after the quantity cap. If Stock is off for new products, or the quantity is blank or unreadable, the product is still created with a quantity of 0. When the feed has no title, the SKU is used as the title, or the barcode when there is no SKU.

The price always comes across. While Create missing products is on, Price on new products is always on and cannot be turned off. This is separate from Price on existing products, which stays off until you turn it on. So turning on creation never starts rewriting the prices of products you already have. If the connection uses price rules, the created product gets the price after the rules.

What else a new product gets

A new product is filled in with everything the supplier sends that you have mapped, as long as that field's On new products checkbox is on. That includes the title, the description, the vendor, the product type, the tags, every image in the supplier's gallery, the compare-at price, the cost, the weight, and the SEO title and description. On a new connection, these start on for new products. Check each row under All fields on an older connection.

If Collections is set up with On new products ticked, a new product is also added to its collections. See Add products to collections from supplier categories.

Records on the connection's Ignore list (optional) are dropped before anything is compared, so an ignored SKU or barcode is never created.

Supplier metafields

Supplier metafields store extra supplier data, like material or colour, on products Everstock creates. On the Connect a supplier page they are in the Images and metafields section, behind Show images and metafields. On a connection you already have, they are in the Field mapping section.

Each row has a Supplier field (the path in the supplier's data, like attributes.material), a Namespace (like custom), a Key (like material) and a Type. The types are Single line text, Multi-line text, Integer, Boolean, URL and JSON. Use Add metafield to add a row and Remove to delete one.

Metafields are only set when a product is created. Everstock never changes a metafield on a product you already have. If a record has no value at that path, the metafield is skipped, not written blank. Everstock also creates the metafield definition in your store on the first real sync.

Set a cap, then preview

Set Quantity cap (optional) before you turn on creation, especially for a large feed. The cap limits every quantity Everstock writes, including the starting stock on a new product. See Exclude items and cap quantities.

Every product or variant a run would create counts towards your plan's per-run limit, the same as the products you already sell. With creation off, supplier items you don't sell never count. So on the Free plan, which syncs up to 2,000 products or variants per run, turning creation on for a large feed can put a run over the limit, and that run is held whole with nothing written. See Plans, connection limits, and changing plan.

Then click Preview changes. The window titled "Preview: proposed changes" says "Nothing has been written to Shopify". Rows with the action Create product are the products a real sync would make. Use Download CSV to check the list, or Open full run details to see the rows in the run.

When it looks right, click Sync now. In the run's Per-record audit, each created product reads New item in the Change column with the status Applied. If creation is off, the same row reads Skipped, with the message "New supplier item. Creating products is off."

Undo a batch of new products

If a run created products you did not want, open the run and use Revert run within 30 days. A revert sets the products the run created to draft. It never deletes them, so you can check them and delete them yourself. See Read the per-record audit trail.

Need help? Visit the support page or email hello@usenormalize.com.