Get Your SKUs Aligned

When it comes to integrating, you need a way to match items on any system you want to connect. You are in luck because any system you want to connect through, IDA already has a way for you to do this.

The Stock Keeping Unit or the SKU is used for this purpose. This single identifier has been used by companies globally for a long time to identify every single variation of the item available. Nearly all modern systems will use the SKU as a way of identifying each unique variation. This SKU is then used to match items across each system and is why it’s a critical piece to get right.

To make sure you get a quick and easy integration, you should make sure that each of your variants has a unique SKU. You can use the Unmatched screen in the IDA Dashboard to make sure you have matched all items. Some issues we see with matching SKUs include having spaces in the SKU or using an underscore instead of a dash or vice versa. The SKU needs to be identical to be automatically matched.

If you are having problems getting your SKUs aligned, it might be worth using an app like Microsoft Excel to analyze your products and SKUs. You can export your lists from your systems and plug them into Excel to see what is happening. It’s sometimes worth trying to open your exported file in a plain text editor as well like Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac. This helps identify when there are extra characters in your SKU.