What is a product catalog in Flexport?
A product catalog is a list of items that can be assigned stock levels in Flexport warehouses and then shipped due to customer orders. There are two types of catalogs:
Flexport Catalog
- What's visible when you go to Inventory. This is a list of DSKUs each of which holds basic information like title, dimensions, weights, barcodes, and more.
- When you first connect to an integration when you first sign up for Flexport
- Flexport downloads your entire catalog (for all items eligible for shipping) and automatically creates new DSKUs with information from the integration.
- From here it is easy for you to create an inbound and send items to Flexport for fulfillment.
Integration Catalog
- The integration catalog is the list of items that a connected integration (channel) has available for shipping. It is continuously synced between Flexport and the integration.
- For example, if your Flexport account is connected to both Shopify and Walmart, then your Flexport account has 1 Flexport catalog and 2 integration catalogs (Walmart and Shopify).
What happens when if I create a new SKU or connect a new integration?
Every time there is a change to the integration catalog, for example:
- A new SKU — For example you add a new SKU to Walmart and then click the 'Sync Catalog' button in Flexport.
- A new integration catalog — You connect an entirely new integration to your Flexport account, such as eBay.
Flexport will check if there is an existing DSKU with the exact same SKU value in the Flexport catalog.
- If there is a matching DSKU, then we create a link between the listing and the DSKU. For more information please read SKU Aliases (Links) in Flexport.
- If there is no matching DSKU, then we create a new DSKU and create a link. If you're connecting a new integration this is usually bad since it means there was a mismatch. For more information please read Checking & Fixing SKU Mismatches.
How can I edit the Flexport catalog?
You can easily hide DSKUs in Flexport Portal. This will hide the DSKU from Inventory but won't change any behavior regarding order imports or inventory level updates.
You can also manually add or remove a link on a DSKU. This will change behavior regarding order imports or inventory level updates, if that's what you want.