What You Need to Know Related to RockSolid and Our Website
This Post:
-
Describes the data we take from RockSolid into Shopify
-
Makes suggestions about adding and updating items in RockSolid
-
Discusses special features we use when bringing items over
We move products from specific departments into the Shopify Website and we do it a department at a time. This import happens to any given department about every 2 weeks or so but can be done at any time. For example: we may import hardware and dog food today and electrical and plumbing tomorrow. If you need something updated ASAP, we can do it at any time because it normally only takes about 20 minutes to do a given department.
Here is what we import:
- Bar Code
- Description
- Notes
- QTY on hand
- Standard Price
- Suggested Retail
- Vendor 1 SKU
- Manufacturer SKU
- Date Last Sold
- Sub Department
- Average Cost
- Date Last Modified
- Date Added
- Class
- Sub Class
- Receive Date
- Weight
There are several key features we use that may be helpful to know when you are adding items or updating existing items in RockSolid that will make the import work better.
-
Descriptions: We use the descriptions provided in RockSolid and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a more friendly description for the web. When you're adding a new item, please try to be descriptive for, not just the bin tags, but also so AI can try to figure out what it is. Obviously, there are description limits in RockSolid so do the best you can. If you don't need the weight on the bin tag, and you add weight in the proper field for the item, we don't need it for AI to figure out weights (see Weights below).
-
Notes: We use this field currently for one specific task. If you put offline in this field anywhere, my import will find it and set the item to DRAFT mode so customers cannot see or order it. It still gets imported but it's a great way, for example to setup an item that may only be a custom order for a customer. It's still in and ready to activate if we decide to sell it later.
-
Suggested Retail: Right now, we're only using this to show that an item is "On Sale" and a marketing feature. If the price is $29.95 and the suggested retail is $31.95, the item will show highlighted as "ON SALE" and the $31.95 will be crossed off on the item's page with the regular price showing.
-
Sub Department: We're using this as a limiter on how many someone can buy for items that we can't get again. If you have brought in 10 items that we can no longer get, you can set the sub department as ~Qty Limit (web) in the drop down list. If you do, customers can only purchase the quantities that we imported. If you leave it blank, they can purchase any quantity. For example, if you have a dog food that you got on special but were only able to get 10 of them, you'd set this and the QTY in RockSolid would be 10. When it's imported, the system would know we only have 10 to sell. One customer could only buy 10 or 2 customers could buy 5 or any quantity totalling 10.
-
Weights: (IMPORTANT) There is a place in RockSolid for adding weights and it's important to shipping that you put in a weight. When importing, we check RockSolid first to see if there is a weight. If there is, obviously, we use it. If not, we check a spreadsheet sent by Orgill to see if there is a matching weight from them. If not, we have AI guess at what the weight should be based on many different factors including the description-that's what makes it important to have an actual weight. You can always just guess because shipping is never exact. If you think it's about 10 pounds, for bucket, you can just put in 10 and it'll probably be close enough. If it's a larger item, add weight. For example, while a rake only weighs a couple of pounds, it should have a weight of about 40 pounds because UPS doesn't like dealing with those big items so they charge based on size.
- Wesley Willis
