Products
Products are the items you sell. Commerce Kitty uses the product catalog as the single source of truth that ties your stock, listings, and orders together across every channel you connect.
How products fit in
A product in Commerce Kitty is the internal record for an item. It does not live on any one marketplace. When you connect a channel through a plugin, Commerce Kitty either imports existing items into the catalog or pushes catalog items out as new listings. The same product can be sold on Shopify, Etsy, eBay, and Amazon at once, and the catalog is how Commerce Kitty knows they are all the same thing.
Each product ties to one or more listings (one per channel) and to inventory for stock tracking.
Product types
Simple
A simple product is a single, sellable item with its own code and price. Most items in a catalog are simple products. A coffee mug, a candle, a book with one edition, all of these are simple products.
Configurable
A configurable product is a parent item made up of several simple products called variants. You use configurable products when the same item comes in different sizes, colors, or materials. A t-shirt sold in small, medium, and large with three colors is one configurable product built on top of nine simple variants.
Configurable products are built from product options. Each variant still has its own code, its own stock, and its own listings.
Product fields
Code
The code is the most important field on a product. It is the unique identifier for this item in your catalog and should match what you use as your SKU, UPC, or other inventory number. Commerce Kitty uses the code to match products during imports and to link the same item across channels.
Keep your codes consistent everywhere. If your Shopify SKU is MUG-BLUE-001 but your Amazon SKU is mug_blue_1, Commerce Kitty will treat them as two separate products and your inventory will not sync correctly. Fix mismatches before you turn on sync.
Name
The display name of the product. This is what shows in your catalog list, on internal reports, and as the default title for new listings. You can override the name per listing when a specific channel needs a different title.
Slug
A URL-safe version of the name, generated automatically from the name. It is used in links inside Commerce Kitty and when the product is exposed on any public surface.
Description
The long-form description of the product. Use this for the full marketing copy, features, materials, and any details a customer might want.
Short description
A brief summary of the product. This is often used for previews, category pages, and channels that need a shorter blurb than the full description.
Enabled
Controls whether the product is active in the catalog. A disabled product is hidden from listing operations and will not be pushed to channels. Use this to temporarily retire seasonal items without deleting them.
Channels
The channels this product is available on. Assigning a channel makes the product eligible to be listed there. If a product is not assigned to a channel, no listing can be created for it on that channel.
Tax category
The tax classification for this product. Tax categories are used by tax plugins such as TaxJar to apply the correct rate. This field appears when a tax plugin is configured.
Shipping category
The shipping classification for this product. Shipping categories group products that share the same shipping rules or handling. This field appears when shipping configuration requires it.
Type
Whether the product is Simple or Configurable. You choose this when creating the product and it determines whether the product has variants.
How products get into the catalog
There are two ways products enter Commerce Kitty. The first is through a plugin import. When you connect a marketplace, you can import existing listings and Commerce Kitty creates products for each one, using the external SKU as the code. The second is by creating products manually in the catalog and then pushing them out to channels as new listings.
Plugins match products by code during imports. If the code already exists, the plugin updates the existing product instead of creating a duplicate. This is why SKU consistency is critical.