SKU - Stock Keeping Units

[Thorbjorn]

Hi all,

I am having my first go at Actinic (and am fairly new to e-commerce) on what seems to be quite a demanding project, I have a design template to build too and a stock management system (SMS) to export orders too.

The client I am building this for has a lot of products and a fully functioning SMS that references products and its variants (such as size and colour) by Stock Keeping Units (SKU's). Their SMS needs to receive an SKU to identify the product and its variants selected by a customer, an example;

T-Shirt Code = T200

The T-Shirt can come in 3 diff sizes,

Small / code = SM
Medium / code = ME
Large / code = LA


And 3 different colours,

White / code = 01
Black / code = 02
Red / code = 03

So if someone ordered a large black t-shirt .. this would produce the SKU “T200LA02”… that can be exported to the SMS.

I am sure I am not the first to attempt this feat in Actinic, I noticed this thread here > http://community.actinic.com/showthr...&highlight=sku that implies the SKU is linked to the product in a product database. I was expecting to just add codes to each product or product variant inside the Actinic software but this appears not to be the case.

Has anyone else used SKU's before? How did they bind them to products and product variants? These are the questions that plague my mind at the moment and would gratefully receive any help or advice on the topic!

Many thanks
Thorbjorn / Toby

[Mike Hughes]

To do this I'd make each SKU a hidden product and then use those as components for the displayed products and variants.

Mike

[Jan]

I have done this by adding the codes to the components as the component name and then building the full product code in the program that exports the orders from the component names and product references.

Regards,

[Thorbjorn]

Thanks guys, that is really helpfull information. I think olderscot's method has hit the nail on the head.

@olderscot - Have you tried this method?
@Jan - What program are you using to export the orders?

[Mike Hughes]

Yes, this is what I do whenever my products have a variant or option. It's a fairly standard thing to do in actinic and has the benefit that it separates the product code and name from the way it's displayed on the website.

I think the Advanced User Guide tells you how to set it up.

Mike

[Jan]

I wrote my own program to export the information using C++. The benefit of building the codes is that you don't have to create 1000's of hidden products to match the actual products, the disadvantage is that it is quite easy to make a mistake.

Regards,