Products 101 (VIDEO)

This 5-minute video shows you how to import products and how to update products once they’ve been added to ShipCompliant. 

Subtopics and where they begin

Video transcript

Hannah:
Hey, I'm Hannah. And this is Zoe from ShipCompliant University. Last time we showed you how to get started with ShipCompliant.

Zoe:
With your brands. So now let's talk about your products and why it's so important to store them in ShipCompliant.

Hannah:
Super. All those delicious products. Booze,

Zoe:
Moonshine,

Hannah:
Bubbly,

Zoe:
Fun juice,

Hannah:
Hoppy goodness. Ooh, products. Let's get started.

Zoe:
Let's do it.

Zoe:
Provide us with your product details, product type, volume, ABV, so we can accurately report on the products ordered by your customers. In the next few minutes, I'll walk you through what you need to know about entering your products in ShipCompliant. I'll walk you through setting up a single product, importing products in bulk and editing your product data.

Zoe:
Let's start by looking at how to import a single product. In your account go to Setup, Products. It's a great way to start because it's straightforward and a lot of what we learn will apply to adding your products in bulk. So pay attention. Here we go. For today, I'll demo adding a wine product. Spirits products, entered exactly the same way. I'm going to select a distribution type of wholesale. For my key I'm going to match the product key or SKU I have set up in my order management system, because it's how we link what's ordered with the product information we need for reporting. For my brand I'm going to select it from the dropdown. This should reflect the brands you've set up previously. If you haven't check out the brands video. For my label, I'm actually going to enter it here. I highly recommend doing this because it's going to create the link between your COLAs and products and make a bunch of steps down the road easier to complete. Description is not a mandatory field, but can be really helpful for finding and viewing products later if you don't know the SKU. ABV is a required field. Some states group orders on reports based on ABV and look for the information on your registration. So it's important to enter ABV. Container size. Most sizes should be available via the dropdown. If you don't see one, let us know, and we can add it. Containers per SKU defaults to 1; don't worry too much about it. Containers per case. Enter here the number of SKUs that come in a case, the most common for wine and spirits is 12. And there are a number of other fields. We can hold a lot of information for you in ShipCompliant, but don't let it hold you up. If we need a UNIMERC for Connecticut registration, we'll prompt you for it later. The information you need to enter, changes slightly depending on the product you're entering. For example, let's switch to beer. You see the pop-up changes. For beer and cider you'll also need to know the number of containers per selling unit i.e. 6 for a six pack. Now let's take a quick look at what we created. You can hover on the label to see an image. Use the filters later to find the label. I'm going to search for Apéritif and there it is.

Zoe:
Now, if you have more than 10 products to import, you'll most likely want to import them in bulk. To do this, download and open a copy of our product import file. When you open it, you'll see required fields are indicated in red. You can also see what's required and check out examples on the second tab of the worksheet. A few things to note, the version here, it's always 2. It helps our system understand the file you're importing has products on it. I'm going to enter my brand key like I've set up previously. Now, number of bottles per SKU. This should always default to 1, always 1, all the way down this spreadsheet. Next, your TTB ID, which is synonymous with your label. If this is easy to retrieve again, I really highly recommend entering it. And last, sell in direct or sell in wholesale. So this is similar to selecting your product distribution type in the previous step. We're looking for Y if you're selling into the channel and N if you're not. So I'm going to quickly enter the rest of the information that's needed here. And then when I'm finished, I'll save the file on my computer so it's easy to find, on my desktop. Go to set up products, return to import products and select my file. Super easy.

Zoe:
Just a quick tip. So if there are a number of products you need to update in ShipCompliant, the easiest way to do this is to export the products you want to change, manipulate the values, and then re-import the spreadsheet into ShipCompliant. When you import that product information for a SKU that already exists in your account, we're going to update the existing SKU with the new information. For example, ABV. The only exception is if you import a product that has the same SKU as an existing product, but a different brand. So we actually allow you to have two of the same SKUs if each has a different brand. But if you want to prevent this, you can just check prevent duplicate product SKUs.

Zoe:
That's it. That's all you need to know to be a master of entering and editing products in ShipCompliant.

Zoe:
Thanks so much for watching, you're well on your way now.

Hannah:
You are one step closer to handing over all of your distributor reporting to us.

Zoe:
Hannah, that's wicked. Wicked awesome.

Hannah:
Yeah, let's celebrate. Where can we get a beer around here? Oh yeah, the kegerator!