SKU (stock keeping unit)
A SKU is the code you assign to one specific sellable item, down to its size and colour, so that you, your supplier and your systems all mean the same thing.
Updated
- Also called
- stock keeping unit
What a good SKU looks like
- One per variant. Oat and Sage are different SKUs:
LT-OAT,LT-SAGE. - Readable. Product, then the attributes that vary, in a fixed order.
- Stable. It does not change when the title or the price does.
- Plain characters. Letters, digits and hyphens. Avoid spaces, and avoid leading zeros, which spreadsheets tend to remove.
Why costs hang on SKUs
A supplier’s price list, a purchase order and a spreadsheet of costs all identify items by SKU. Shopify’s own identifiers are long numbers that nobody types. So any bulk cost update comes down to matching SKUs in a file to variants in the store, and it fails where SKUs are missing, duplicated or formatted differently in two places.
In Cogsy
The CSV import matches rows to variants by SKU. Before anything is saved it lists SKUs it cannot find and tells you when one SKU matches several variants. Bundle components you define yourself are also added by SKU.
Questions
- Is a SKU the same as a barcode?
- No. A barcode (UPC, EAN or GTIN) is a standardised global number for the product. A SKU is internal and you choose its format.
- Can two variants share a SKU?
- Shopify allows it, but it makes the SKU useless for telling them apart. If the same physical item is sold as two listings, sharing a SKU can be deliberate, and both then take the same cost.
- Does every variant need a SKU?
- It needs one to be matched by a cost import. Cogsy has a "No SKU" filter that lists the variants without one.
Related
Feature
CSV import with a previewUpload costs by SKU, with a source and a start date if you have them. You see every change before anything is saved.
Glossary
Product bundleA bundle is several products sold together as one item. The types of bundle, how to work out a bundle's cost from its components, and the common mistakes.
Guide
How to bulk update cost per item in ShopifyThree ways to update cost per item for many Shopify variants at once: the bulk editor, a product CSV import, or an app. Steps and pitfalls for each.