Import Your Product Catalog
How to bring your existing product catalog from a connected platform into Commerce Kitty so you can manage inventory, listings, and orders from one place.
How importing works
Commerce Kitty does not require you to enter products by hand. Once a plugin is connected, you can turn on Import Products and the plugin pulls your existing catalog from the platform. Each item becomes a product in your Commerce Kitty catalog, and the platform listing becomes a listing tied to that product.
Imports are smart about duplicates. If a product code already exists in your catalog, the plugin updates the existing record instead of creating a new one. This is how products from different channels get linked together by SKU.
Step 1. Make sure your SKUs are clean
Before you import, take five minutes to make sure your SKUs are consistent on the platform you are about to import from. The product code in Commerce Kitty becomes the SKU you use for sync, and consistent SKUs are how Commerce Kitty links the same product across channels.
If you have products with no SKU on the source platform, the import may fail or create products with auto-generated codes. Set real SKUs on the platform first.
Inconsistent SKUs across platforms are the single biggest source of sync problems. The same item with
MUG-001 on Shopify and mug_001 on Etsy will end up as two separate products
in Commerce Kitty and they will not sync to each other.
Step 2. Turn on Import Products
Open Configuration → Plugins and click into the plugin you want to import from. Find the Import Products option and toggle it on. Save the plugin.
Commerce Kitty queues the import job. Depending on how many products you have, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes for everything to come through.
Step 3. Watch the import in progress
Open Catalog → Products. Refresh the page after a minute. New products should start appearing as the plugin works through your catalog.
For very large catalogs (thousands of products), the full import can take longer. Commerce Kitty processes imports in the background and you can navigate away. Come back later and the catalog will be populated.
Step 4. Verify the import was complete
Once the import has settled, do a quick spot check:
- Compare the count of products in Commerce Kitty against the count on the source platform
- Open a few products to verify their codes match what you expected
- Check that variants on configurable products imported correctly (each variant should have its own code)
- Look at the notifications bell for any import errors
Importing from a second platform
The first import populates your catalog. Subsequent imports from other platforms behave differently: Commerce Kitty looks for products with matching codes and links them together instead of creating duplicates.
For example, if you import from Shopify first and then from Etsy, any Etsy listing whose SKU matches a Shopify product code becomes another listing on the same product. Stock is now shared between both platforms.
This linking is the foundation of multichannel sync. The cleaner your SKUs, the more products link automatically and the less manual matching you have to do later.
What if products do not link automatically
Sometimes the same physical item has different SKUs on different platforms. When that happens, Commerce Kitty imports them as separate products and you have two choices:
- Fix the SKUs at the source. Update the platform listings to use consistent SKUs and re-import. This is the cleanest fix.
- Manually link them in Commerce Kitty. Edit one of the products and update its code to match the other. The next sync round picks this up and merges them.