Product Mapping Guide

How does product mapping work?

Product Mapping in Tradebox is a feature which is used primarily where your online SKUs do not match the stock codes you have set up in Tradebox or your accounts software, although it serves some other purposes as well, which we'll get into later in this guide. 

For Tradebox's purposes, each online product should have its own unique SKU.  Tradebox can link many online SKUs to the same product in your accounts software or Tradebox, but this doesn't work the same the other way around. Any individual online SKU can only be mapped to a Tradebox or accounts software product once per sales channel. 

The mapping table can be accessed via the Products module in Tradebox. You'll see a button on that page called Mappings, and when you click on that it launches the Mapping table.

The table is blank until you select a Sales Channel from the drop down list, at which point it populates all of the existing mappings for that channel. 

By selecting different options from the Show drop down menu, you can view either:

All Mappings - shows every mapping in the channel, whether complete or incomplete

Tradebox SKUs with No Mapped Marketplace SKU - any incomplete mappings that are missing a marketplace SKU

Marketplace SKUs with no Mapped Tradebox SKU - any incomplete mappings missing a Tradebox SKU

Marketplace SKUs with no mapped Sage/Xero Product - any incomplete mappings missing an accounts SKU

Mappings can also be searched by any of the three SKU types using the search box on the top right.

In the example above, on my webstore I sell a product which has a SKU of WHITEBOARD online. This product is recorded in Tradebox and my accounts package as BOARD001. Left to its own devices, Tradebox wouldn't know what product WHITEBOARD related to, which would cause any order for it to go into a status of Query in Tradebox. By making sure there's a mapping in place, we're saving ourselves the manual task of correcting the query order. Resolving queries will add mappings over time; you only have to map a SKU once per channel for it to be remembered, but this process can take time if you sell a lot of products.

The Additional Purposes of Product Mapping

The first three columns, Marketplace SKU, Tradebox SKU and Accounts SKU, represent the product code on your online site, within Tradebox itself and in your accounts package respectively. The three of these form the main body of the mapping table and hold the relationship between which SKU appears where for each individual product.

Note: The Accounts SKU column will not appear if you aren't linking Tradebox to an accounts package, or if you're only posting financial entries to your accounts for the selected channel.

The rest of the columns are there to allow product mapping to fulfil some other optional functions that will change how products are treated on download or upload.

Multiplier: The Quantity Multiplier feature is one that can apply to both downloads and uploads. You can see above that the multiplier for my TEXTBOOK product has been set to 5. I sell a pack of 5 text books, but I have them listed as individual products in my accounts package. An order for a pack of textbooks with a quantity of 1 actually translates to 5 textbooks that need to come out of stock. Setting the multiplier to 5 will make sure my stock remains correct. There is also a setting that allows Tradebox to take the multiplier into account when uploading stock levels back to the marketplace as well, so if I have 100 textbooks in stock, that will show as 20 packs of 5 on my website. If using this feature, your prices must be divisible by a whole pence to avoid rounding errors. Please also note that the multiplier must be in place before an order is downloaded to take effect.

Excluded: This will prevent Tradebox attempting to upload a stock level back to the marketplace for the specified product. 

Max Upload Qty: Tradebox will never upload a stock level higher than the amount set here, regardless of the actual free stock quantity.

Fixed Upload Qty: Tradebox will always upload this figure regardless of the actual free stock quantity.

Last Upload Qty: When Tradebox uploads a stock level back to your marketplace, it'll record the quantity uploaded here for your reference. This cannot be manually edited.

Channel ID: Some marketplaces and websites require an additional ID for use when Tradebox is uploading a stock level. These are eBay, Shopify, Bigcommerce and Woocommerce. The channel ID can be downloaded by updating your product records from the relevant site. This can be manually edited within the product mapping for eBay only.

Variation: You'll only see this column if you're looking at the mapping for an eBay channel. Whether a product is a variation or not is also required information for a product to successfully upload back to eBay. This flag will be automatically set on import of your products from eBay, and cannot be manually edited.

Any existing product mapping can be edited by double clicking it on the grid.

The Action Menu

 Clicking on the Action menu in the Mappings screen will open up a number of new options for you. These can be used to add, edit or delete individual mappings, or to make changes in bulk.

Add and Edit Product Mapping

 When you choose to add a new product mapping, the above screen will appear. You can enter the relationship here between the Tradebox SKU and the Marketplace SKU, and the Accounts Product if applicable. If you are using Accounts Software stock control, Tradebox will not allow you to save a mapping unless the Tradebox SKU and the Accounts Product are identical.

Is Sage Assembly denotes whether a product is a BOM in Sage accounts or not. This must be ticked for Tradebox to deal with stock upload correctly for BOM products.

Posting Multiplier, Exclude From Upload, Upload a Fixed Quantity, Maximum Upload Quantity and Channel ID are all covered in the section above. 

The additional option here, Apply to all Channels, will add the new mapping to every channel, to save you duplicating work. 

Choosing the option to Edit Product Mapping will open the same screen for the product mapping you have selected in the grid. You can make any changes required to the mapping here, and then select Save for those changes to take immediate effect.

Delete Product Mapping and Delete All Product Mappings

The next two options on the Action menu are Delete Product Mapping and Delete All Product Mappings. The first will delete the mapping(s) you have selected in the grid, whereas Delete All Product Mappings will completely remove all mappings for this channel. We'd advise taking a backup before deleting any significant number of mappings.

Exporting and Importing Mappings

Exporting and importing your mappings can be useful if:

• You want to make changes to a large number of your existing mappings
• You wish to add a large number of new mappings
• You have more than one channel that uses the same mappings and don't want to set them up more than once.

Export Mappings to File will give you a complete list of all mappings held within Tradebox for this channel. If you amend this file and then import it back into Tradebox, it will update the mapping table. If you've changed something about an existing mapping, then as long as the mapping has the same Marketplace SKU, the existing mapping will be updated. If the Marketplace SKU doesn't match any other mapping, a new one will be created.

Import Mappings from File allows you to create new mappings or update existing ones by importing from a CSV. We have a step by step guide available to help you create the file and go through the import process.

Exclude In Bulk

If you need to exclude a large number of products from your stock uploads, the Exclude in Bulk option will open a new window for you to go through and quickly select which SKUs you want to exclude. This is quicker than changing them individually, and generally faster than importing a CSV as well, unless you want to exclude a very large number of codes.

Reset Last Upload Quantity

When Tradebox uploads a stock level to your online marketplace, it records the stock quantity it uploaded within the mapping table here. Tradebox will then check your free stock levels against this number to detect when a change has been made. Occasionally, you may need to reset this to allow the product to upload the same stock quantity for a second time. To do this, you'd select the mapping for the product in question, and choose Reset Last Upload Quantity from the Actions menu.