Expandly: Help & Support

Overview

Your merge preference will determine how your products merge on Expandly when you import listings from your different selling channels. 

If you have a product that appears differently on each of your sales channel, when importing your listings to Expandly, we will not recognise that this is the same product, and will create separate products within Expandly based on each listing. 

To avoid overselling, where products are the same but appear differently, you can manually merge products, or link quantities, to ensure quantities are automatically adjusted when sales orders import or stock levels are changed. 

What could be causing the duplicate products in Expandly?

1. Inconsistent SKUs and/or Titles across products you sell individually(No Variations) 

If you sell individual products (no variations), and these have different SKUs and or Titles across different selling channels, when you import your products to Expandly these will not automatically merge as they do not meet any merge logic criteria.

For example: You sell pink socks, one size fits all, under SKU: '123' Title: 'Pink Socks - One size fits all' on Shopify and SKU: 321 Title: Socks - 'One size fits all - Pink' on eBay.

In this instance, to link quantities together and ensure accurate stock levels when sales orders import or you update quantities, you would need to do a Product Merge.

For more information on how to do this, please see our Product Merging on Expandly - Individual Products guide:

Product Merging on Expandly - Individual Products – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when performing a Product Merge:

• If you sell on Amazon, their quantity updates works based on SKU so if this is removed from the product during the merging process, this will cause issues with inventory updates. To avoid this from happening, please select the Amazon product as the primary product when merging on Expandly.
• Once Product merges have been saved on Expandly, only the primary product selected will appear on your Expandly account. The other product/variations will be merged into the primary product and listings will become linked based on this merge. 
• Product merges are irreversible. Once merged, you will not be able to unmerge the products/Listings on Expandly and will instead be required to delete the product(s) from Expandly and reimport to recreate the separate products and listings into Expandly.

2. Inconsistent SKUs and/or Titles across products you sell as variations

If you sell variation products and these have different SKUs or product titles on different sales channels, again, when you import your products to Expandly these will not automatically merge as they do not meet any merge logic criteria.

For example: You sell Pink Socks (with the option of Children or Adult Sizes) under SKUs: '12A' and '12K' and Title: 'Pink Socks - Various Sizes' on Shopify, and SKUs: '21A' and '21K' Title: 'Adult and Children Size Socks - Pink' on eBay.

In this instance, to link quantities together and ensure accurate stock levels when sales orders import or you update quantities, you would need to do a Variation Merge.

For more information on how to do this, please see our Product Merging on Expandly - Variation Products guide:

Product Merging on Expandly - Variation Products – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when performing a Variation Merge:

• If you sell on Amazon, their quantity updates works based on SKU so if this is removed from the product during the merging process, this will cause issues with inventory updates. To avoid this from happening, please select the Amazon product as the primary product when merging the variations on Expandly.
• When merging variations on Expandly, ensure attributes (the options you sell of the product) are an exact match across channels (i.e. if you sell Size and Colour options of a product, these must be the attribute names across all the channels - These could not be 'Choose Colour' or 'Select Size' for example). If they do not match, we recommend linking the quantities instead as creating a mismatch in variation attribute will cause errors when we attempt to push quantity updates. 
• You can only merge a maximum of 2x variation products together. If you need to merge more than 2x variations together, our recommendation will be to manually link this together instead. 
• Once Variation merges have been saved on Expandly, only the primary product selected will appear on your Expandly account. The other product/variations will be merged into the primary product and listings will become linked based on this merge. 
• Variation merges are irreversible. Once merged, you will not be able to unmerge the products/Listings on Expandly and will instead be required to delete the product(s) from Expandly and reimport to recreate the separate products and listings into Expandly.

3. Different number of variations across different products & listings

If the number of variations are not a match across the different products, when you import your products to Expandly these will not automatically merge as they do not meet any merge logic criteria.

For example: You sell Pink Socks in Sizes '11-3', '4.-6' and '7-9' on Shopify, and Sizes '11-3', '4.-6', '7-9' and '10-12' on eBay.

In this instance, to link quantities together and ensure accurate stock levels when sales orders import or you update quantities, you would need to do a Link Quantities.

For more information on how to do this, please see our Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly guide:

Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when Linking Quantities:

• You are unable to add additional products/SKUs to an existing link in Expandly. In this scenario, if you need to add more products to the link, you will be required to unlink the quantities and re-link together, including all SKUs you wish to control stock levels across. 

4. Different variation attributes across different products & listings 

If the variation attributes are not a match across the different products, when you import your products to Expandly these will not automatically merge as they do not meet any merge logic criteria.

For example: You sell Pink Socks in Option: 'Size' on Shopify, and Options: Choose Size' and 'Colour' on eBay.

In this instance, to link quantities together and ensure accurate stock levels when sales orders import or you update quantities, you would need to do a Link Quantities.

For more information on how to do this, please see our Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly guide:

Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when Linking Quantities:

• You are unable to add additional products/SKUs to an existing link in Expandly. In this scenario, if you need to add more products to the link, you will be required to unlink the quantities and re-link together, including all SKUs you wish to control stock levels across. 

5. You sell products Individually (no variations) on some channels, and as part of a Variation on others

If  you sell your products individually on some channels but as part of a variation on others, when you import your products to Expandly these will not automatically merge as they do not meet any merge logic criteria.

For example: You only sell Children's Pink Socks (SKU 13K) on Shopify but sell the same Pink Socks on eBay as a variation which includes Children's sizes (SKU 13K) and Adult's sizes (SKU 13L).

In this instance, to link quantities together and ensure accurate stock levels when sales orders import or when you update quantities, you would need to do a Link Quantities.

For more information on how to do this, please see our Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly guide:

Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when Linking Quantities:

• You are unable to add additional products/SKUs to an existing link in Expandly. In this scenario, if you need to add more products to the link, you will be required to unlink the quantities and re-link together, including all SKUs you wish to control stock levels across.

6. You have selected 'Do Not Merge' as your merge preference on Expandly

By selecting 'Do Not Merge' when adding your sales channel accounts to Expandly will mean that for each listing imported into Expandly from your selling channel(s), a separate product will be created on Expandly. We will not implement any merge logic based on SKU and/or Title matches and a separate product will be created on the platform.

In this instance, if your SKU structure has been set up so that each listing has a unique SKU (which is the same across your different selling channels), or where you have created listings and your Titles match (across your different selling channels), you may wish to review you merge settings, to allow the merge logic to auto-merge these together during the import. 

Alternatively, if you do wish for separate products to be created (this may be beneficial if you have set up the same SKU across different products, which you do not want to be merged, for example), once the products have been imported in to Expandly, you can then review product date and either manually merge or link quantities together to ensure accurate stock levels. 

For more information on how to do this, please see our Product Merging on Expandly - Individual Products guide:

Product Merging on Expandly - Individual Products – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when performing a Product Merge:

• If you sell on Amazon, their quantity updates works based on SKU so if this is removed from the product during the merging process, this will cause issues with inventory updates. To avoid this from happening, please select the Amazon product as the primary product when merging on Expandly.
• Once Product merges have been saved on Expandly, only the primary product selected will appear on your Expandly account. The other product/variations will be merged into the primary product and listings will become linked based on this merge. 
• Product merges are irreversible. Once merged, you will not be able to unmerge the products/Listings on Expandly and will instead be required to delete the product(s) from Expandly and reimport to recreate the separate products and listings into Expandly.

For more information on how to do this, please see our Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly guide

Linking Products & Quantities on Expandly – Expandly: Help & Support

Things to note when Linking Quantities:

• You are unable to add additional products/SKUs to an existing link in Expandly. In this scenario, if you need to add more products to the link, you will be required to unlink the quantities and re-link together, including all SKUs you wish to control stock levels across.

Need more help?

If you need a little extra help, no problem. Contact us, and we'll be happy to help. 

Multi-Channel eCommerce Software | Expandly