What is SKU? Stock Keeping Unit Meaning, Importance, USE, Generate

Overall, the challenges can be classified into two different categories. These are Intrastore and Interstore, respectively.

Let’s look at intrastore challenges first-

Direct Duplication-

Sellers often create a direct duplicate for other product(s) that might be completely different from the previous one with the original SKU.

Consider an example of two products with different color variants but the same brand. There are various instances when a different product can be assigned the same SKU, as shown above.

1. A pair of Blue shirts get the same SKU. Thus, two different variations but the same SKU.

2. Seller forgets the previous SKUs. Assigns the same SKU to another product

3. Seller deliberately creates the same SKU due to unawareness

Duplicate SKUs due to multiple listings-

This is a significant problem exclusive to eBay listings.

eBay allows users to create multiple listing pages for similar products. 

Sellers usually do this to earn as many links as possible for a given set of keywords. However, with duplicate listings, duplicate SKUs also pop up. This is not a good practice as far as inventory management is concerned.

Duplication in Shopify-

Shopify allows sellers to create duplicate pages from an existing one quickly and then edit the details. While the idea here is to help sellers make quick pages, the SKUs are often carried forward from an old page to the new page. Sellers forget to change them, leading to duplication.

No SKU in Storefront-

A lot of times, an item is stocked in the warehouse, but no details are put on the storefront. The seller usually forgets or does not keep a log of the previous SKUs.

In such cases, a seller may put together a new SKU on the storefront compared to SKUs already assigned in the warehouse.

Since an SKU log is not maintained, the seller may also end up assigning a duplicate SKU for the product. This duplicate SKU may be the same as some other product already listed on the storefront.

Consequences-

1. Same SKU for two products may result in shipping the wrong product

2. Inability to locate product in warehouse and ship

3. Overall dip in sales and reputation

By now, you might have understood that duplication may happen across all storefronts and marketplaces.

Now, if you employ an inventory and order automation tool between all these, it cannot function.

Deleting Products without keeping a log of old SKUs-

Often sellers remove certain products from the storefront already having an assigned SKU. After the product is deleted, its SKU should also be eliminated. But, many times, it is not.

When new products with the same attributes make way to the warehouse, the seller assigns the same SKU again, and a duplicate is created.

Interstore Issues-

Most of the sellers selling on multiple storefront and marketplaces mostly use some sort of inventory management software to automate inventory and order management backend tasks.

However, when sellers create duplicate SKUs on multiple storefronts, the automation software ceases to work.

Some of the common Interstore issues encountered include-

Auto-mapping failure-

The system cannot map the SKUs coming from different storefronts and marketplaces.

Unable to perform SKU mapping-

SKU mapping is matching the products you created on your inventory management system with the respective channels you are selling them on.

Solution-

These issues pertaining to duplicate SKUs are now sorted with the help of  inventory management systems.

You can also watch this video to learn to resolve SKU duplication in an inventory management software

SKU code updater to avoid duplication

We understand that specific business models require merchants to create and work with duplicate SKUs. This is why our revised SKU management tool allows you to keep duplicate SKUs if you want them to. Please go through the featured update post to know more.