Shopify — Inventory & Products

Evolution ERP is the master of your catalogue. Inventory categories are published to Shopify as collections, inventory items become products, and item variations become product variations. Prices, costs, SKUs and hero images travel with them. Once an item is published, editing it in Evolution keeps the matching Shopify product up to date.

The publishing order

Because products can only live inside a published collection, work top-down:

1. Publish categories → collections first.
2. Publish items → products under those collections.
3. Optionally set up variations and hero images.

Both steps are launched from the Shopify Plugin page, or from the Inventory registers (see Search Registers).

Step 1 — Categories to Collections

Open Inventory Categories to Shopify Collections from the plugin page (the category configurator). Select the categories you want to appear online and publish them.

• Each selected category is created in Shopify as a collection. The collection title, description and SEO fields come from the Evolution category.
• Categories published to Shopify are activated automatically, which is what allows their items to be published as products.
• You can start (publish) or stop a category individually or in bulk.

Opening the collection from Evolution

Once a category has been published, open it in Inventory → Categories and pick the Shopify tab. Two links sit at the top of that tab:

• View in Storefront — the collection page as a customer sees it.
• View in Shopify Admin — the collection record in your Shopify admin, where products, sort order and publishing channels are managed.

Both open in a new tab. They appear only where the category actually exists in Shopify — a category you have not published yet shows neither link, which is a quick way to confirm at a glance whether a category has made it across.

Step 2 — Items to Products

Open Inventory Items to Shopify Products (the Product Configurator). This is a grid of the items under your published categories, with tools to filter, edit and publish them.

Filtering the list

• Search keyword — matches code, title, SKU and description.
• Category — “All Categories”, or a single published category (parents and their sub-categories are listed).
• Shopify status — “All Products”, “In Shopify”, “Not in Shopify”, “With Hero Image”, “With No Hero Image”.

The columns

Publishing

Tick the items you want (there is a select-all checkbox) and use the publish/update actions. You can:

• Publish new items as products.
• Update items already in Shopify (title, description, SKU, price, status).
• Set items Active or Draft in bulk.
• Delete a product from Shopify (this does not delete the Evolution item).

Every bulk action is written to the activity log for audit.

Product status: Draft vs Active

Shopify products carry a status that controls whether they are visible online:

• Active — visible and available for sale.
• Draft — hidden; use while you finish setting up the product.
• Unlisted / Archived — also available where offered by the editor.

A common pattern is to publish new items as Draft, review the titles, descriptions and images, then switch them to Active.

Variations

An Evolution item can be published as a variation of another item (for example size or colour). Variations map to Shopify product variations, and a product can be split by up to three options — Colour and Size, say.

• Name the options in the Variant Options row on the Product Manager, left to right. Position matters: option 1 is the first column in Shopify. A product that uses only one option behaves exactly as it always has.
• Where no option name is set, the variation option is named “Type”. You can change that default per category using Set Variation Name in the category configurator — this updates every already-published product in that category.
• Use the variation import picker to add existing items as variations, filtering by keyword (e.g. CLD% to match codes starting with CLD) and by published category.
• Each variation carries its own SKU, cost and price, plus its own value for every option the product defines. Shopify will not accept a variation that is missing one, so Evolution names any empty option before it sends the change rather than letting the save fail.
• The variations list on the Product Manager shows one column per option, headed with that option's name, so you can read each variation's Colour and Size separately instead of reading them out of a joined title. A product with one option shows the one column it always did, now named after the option.
• Removing all of a product's variations restores its single default variant.
• Renaming an existing option must be done in Shopify.

Hero images

An item's hero image in Evolution is pushed to Shopify as the product image. If you change the hero image on an item that is already published, the new image is re-sent to Shopify automatically the next time the item is saved.

Coming the other way, images already in Shopify can be pulled into Evolution with the Store Import tool. An image Shopify has assigned to a particular variant is imported into that variation's own Evolution item, and each item's hero is filled from its own images — only where the item has no hero yet.

Product attributes (metafields)

Evolution item specifications can be published to Shopify as product metafields, so attribute data (for example material or dimensions) is available on the storefront. Attributes are enabled per category — flag which specifications should sync when you publish the category, and only those are sent.

Setting an attribute up

The mapping is authored on the category, not on the attribute. Open Inventory → Categories, choose a category, and go to its Shopify tab. The Attributes table there lists every attribute on that category with two things you control:

• Shopify Name — what the field is called in Shopify. Leave it as the Evolution name unless the store needs something different. This name is shared: changing it changes the field everywhere it is used.
• Sync — Yes sends this attribute's value for products in this category; No clears it in Shopify. The setting is per category, so the same attribute can be published for one category and left alone for another.

Seeing where an attribute is published

Because the mapping lives on the category, it used to be invisible from the attribute itself. Inventory → Attributes now shows it both ways round.

In the attribute register, a Shopify icon in the last column marks every attribute that is mapped to your store. Attributes with no mapping show nothing, and the column is hidden entirely if you do not use Shopify.

Opening one of those attributes shows the detail — the same icon beside the page title, and a Published to Shopify panel giving:

• the store the attribute is published to (and, where more than one store is connected, one line per store);
• Syncing or Not syncing — whether any category is currently set to send this attribute's values;
• Field defined or No field definition — whether Shopify holds a metafield definition for the field. Values are sent either way, but without a definition the field is not pinned or filterable in Shopify. Saving the Shopify tab on any category that uses the attribute creates it;
• the Shopify field name and the full metafield key, for anyone working in Shopify directly;
• a link that opens that field in your Shopify admin.

The list of categories underneath gains a Shopify sync column, so you can see in one place which categories send this attribute and which do not — the same Yes/No you set on each category's Shopify tab.

Changing the mapping for several categories at once

The Attributes table also appears in the Category Configurator. Tick a category and its attributes open underneath, ready to edit. Update Attribute Mapping saves the Shopify Name and Sync setting for every ticked category in one go — useful when the same attribute is used across a group of categories and you want it named or published consistently.

Seeing an item's attributes on the item itself

The category tells you what can be published. To see what has actually reached the store for one item, open the item and go to its Shopify tab. An Attributes table now sits under the product details, listing every attribute on the item's category side by side with Shopify:

• Evolution Value — the value held on the item's own Attributes tab.
• In Shopify — what the store holds for that field right now, or a dash if it holds nothing.
• Sync — whether the item's Inventory Category publishes this attribute.
• Status — the two read together: In sync, Not yet in Shopify, Differs from Shopify, To be removed, or a muted note explaining why nothing will be sent — No value, Sync off for category, or Not on this category.

Where the two sides disagree, a banner names the attributes that are out of step and the editor treats the item as changed — so Update Shopify Product is live even if you have not typed anything. Previously an attribute change made on the category could not be pushed from the item at all: with no edit to the product fields themselves, saving reported “No changes were made, nothing to push to Shopify” and stopped. Saving now sends the attribute values, and clears any that the category has stopped publishing.

Attributes on variations

A variation is its own inventory item with its own attribute values, so it gets its own Attributes table on the Variation editor, plus an Update Attributes in Shopify button. Use it to send that one variation's attributes without touching the parent product or any of its other variations.

Where the values land: products and variants

Shopify holds attribute values against either a product or a single variant, and Evolution now works out which is correct for each item rather than always writing to the product:

• An ordinary item with no variations is published as a product on its own, so its values go on the product.
• A variation item's values go on its own variant.
• A master item that is published as the first variant of a multi-variant product — the item whose SKU appears in the Variations list on its Shopify tab — has its values written to that variant, matched on SKU.

Keeping products in sync

When you edit an inventory item in Evolution, the plugin updates Shopify if:

• the item's category is published to Shopify, and
• the item already exists as a Shopify product.

A changed hero image is re-pushed, and a changed price is pushed to Shopify — to the product's default variant for an ordinary item, or to that variation for an item that is published as a variation of another. Either way the result is recorded in the item's history — including whether the figure was sent with GST or without, so you can confirm both that the change reached Shopify and that it went across in the basis your store expects, without leaving Evolution. Attribute values travel with the same save: anything the item's category publishes is sent, and anything it has stopped publishing is cleared — see Product attributes above for how to check that before you save. Deleting the product from the configurator removes it from Shopify while leaving the Evolution item intact.

If the item's category is published but the item itself is not linked to a Shopify product, a price change cannot go anywhere. Evolution does not guess which product you meant. It records Price change not sent to Shopify in the item's history, so you can see why the store did not change. Open the item's Shopify tab to link it — see Linking an item that is already in Shopify.

Linking an item that is already in Shopify

Sometimes a product already exists in Shopify, but the Evolution item for it is not linked. It may have been created in Shopify directly, or its link was cleared by a mapping reset. When you open the Shopify tab on that item, Evolution looks in your store for a variant with exactly the same SKU, matching on either the item's SKU or its code. If it finds one, the tab shows a Shopify SKU match found panel instead of the product editor.

The panel summarises what was found: the Shopify product and its status, the variant and its options, the SKU, the Shopify price, and how the product relates to your Evolution items. It then asks Do you want to link this product?

• Single product. The product has no variants. The item is linked as that product.
• Variant of a range. The SKU belongs to one variant of a product whose master is already linked to another Evolution item. The panel names that master. The item is linked as one of its variations.

Nothing is linked until you click Yes, link this product. The link is written to the item's history, and the tab then opens the normal product or variation editor. No leaves the item exactly as it was. Linking needs inventory admin permission; other users see the panel without the button.

Sometimes the panel explains why the item cannot be linked from there instead:

• Already linked to another item — a Shopify variant can only belong to one Evolution item. Correct the other item's link first, or give this item a different SKU.
• A range with no master linked — a range is linked as a whole, master item and options together. Use the Store Import tool for that, then reopen the tab.
• The SKU is on more than one variant — Evolution cannot tell which one is this item. Make the SKU unique in Shopify, then reopen the tab.

Editing a single product

The Product Manager screen edits one product directly: SKU, Status, Title, Description, Cost, Price, its variation options and variations table, SEO (Page Title and Meta Description), collections and tags. The Variation editor edits a single variation — SKU, Cost, Price, and one box per option, each labelled with that option's real name — and shows which parent item it belongs to. A product with one option shows the single name box it always did.