SKU is short for Stock Keeping Unit, is made up of alphanumeric characters and is designed to be unique to a single product. It’s important to note that the SKU is not the same as a product’s UPC (barcode).
If you are selling products it is important to set up your inventory correctly and one of the most important parts of this process is setting up the product SKU.
Save the time fighting Excel sheets to generate SKUs for our products.
Watch a short video guide.
The application is available on Shopify App Store.
The app includes a free to use plan which lets you create simple SKUs for all your products. Try it now!
With the free version of the app, you can generate SKUs for up to 100 products, using a Prefix, Suffix, Auto number and '-' as delimitter.
You can also preview the SKU generated using all the other app features.
You can use the label printing feature for one product at a time, using only predefined templates.
For only $9.95 one-time fee, you can use advanced features to manually generate SKUs, as long as the app is installed on your store.
The features from the monthly fee plans are not included (Automatic generation, Custom Codes and Premium).
You can create SKUs for an unlimited number of products.
For only $2.99 monthly, the app can generate SKUs automatically. Learn how Automatic generation works.
This feature works with the free features as well as with the upgraded features. However, if you have not upgraded the feature set, it will only generate using the free set of options.
You can create SKUs for an unlimited number of products.
For $5.99 monthly you will get Automatic generation and the posibility to define your own codes (abbreviations) for product options, product types and product vendors.
It also enables variant position code in Specials category.
It enables the Letter Combinations option for product name abbreviation.
Includes SKU and Barcode duplicate checker.
For $8.99 monthly you will get label printing options:
Note: The options included in the one-time fee plan, Advanced Options, are not part of any of the monthly fee plans.
The app allows you to create SKUs by choosing a combination of codes created automatically, based on your product’s data or on the data you enter in the app.
You can arrange the components of the SKU code in different ways using the Layout control. Drag and Drop components to rearrange them.
These code types are used for product options, product type and product vendor abbreviation.
Custom codes feature allows you to define what abbreviation to use for each option (variant title), product type or vendor.
This will help you define better codes, choosing the most appropriate abbreviation for each title, which is not always possible with an automatic abbreviation.
For example, if you have color options, like GREEN and GREY you will not be able to create distinct 3-letter codes selecting the first characters, but with custom codes you can define codes like GRN for green and GRY for grey.
Each abbreviation can be up to 7 characters long.
Also, this subscription enables letter combination options for product title and calculates the check digit for EAN or UPC barcode generation.
The duplicate checker shows you which product variants have duplicated SKUs or Barcodes and helps you generate new codes (SKUs or barcodes) for the variants with duplicate values.
This option is available starting with the Custom Codes plan.
It checks the SKUs and barcodes for all the products and variants of your store, either if it's created by our app or not.
The process of verifying all store products can be time consuming especially for stores with a large number of products, therefore the app does this check in the background and the changes in Shopify admin might take a while to reflect in the Duplicate checker page.
This option does not prevent duplicate SKUs from being created. It only checks the Shopify product base and reports if duplicate SKUs or barcodes are detected.
To avoid getting duplicate SKUs or barcodes the SKU template must use a combination of components that ensure the uniqueness of generated codes. One option is to use the Auto-number field and make sure it is never reset.
The UPC or EAN barcodes are sequence of numbers with a specific length and a special digit at the end, called the check digit. This digit follow specific rules and allows to check the integrity of the barcode.
In order to add the check digit to a generated code, you need to enable the "Barcode check digit" option, which is available starting with the Custom Codes plan.
Once activated, if the generated code contains only digits (0 to 9) the app will calculate and append the check digit.
So, if you want to generate a EAN-13 barcode, which is 13 digits long, you need to make sure that the generated code, according to the template rules, has 12 digits. The app will add the 13th digit, the check digit.
For example, You can set a 6-digit prefix and a 6-digit auto number (like 000001) then disable all other options. You will get a EAN-13 barcode with a correct check digit, which can be printed using the EAN-13 encoding.
Watch how to configure the template for barcode generation.
The barcodes generated by the app are not globally unique, unless you use a prefix you previously bought from GS1. Please see gs1.org for details.
"The 020-029 GS1 Prefixes are worth a special mention. GS1 defines this as being available for retailer internal use (or internal use by other types of business)." source Wikipedia.
Also, you can find more info about barcodes on gtin.info.
You may create SKUs for all your products in one go or you may choose to create the SKU codes one collection at a time.
If you select to create the codes for a collection, you could use the Prefix or the Suffix to create a coding specific to that collection.
Also, you can generate SKUs for a set of products selected using the powerful search of Shopify admin. Search the products that need SKUs, select them and click Actions / Generate SKUs menu, to send the products to the SKU generator, as in the image below.
The collection and product list filters are available for the paid version of the app.
The Set only missing SKUs checkbox allows you to generate SKUs only for variants without SKU, leaving the rest of the SKUs untouched.
Remove spaces - when codes are made from the first N letters it may include spaces; if this is checked, all spaces in the generated SKU are removed.
Options first chars - This applys only if Product options uses one of the following: First character, First 2, First 3 or First 4.
The Save settings button will save the current SKU template settings without generation any SKU.
The Generate button will generate SKUs, for the targeted products, using the current template settings. It also saves the settings.
The Generate button is disabled if you are using the free version and you've selected an option which is available only in the paid version.
This section lists 10 products, from the selected collection if you choosed to target a collection, to provide a preview of how the generated SKU will look like.
You can see, side by side, the existing SKU of a product (variant) and the SKU which will be created by the app, in real time, as you change the generator's options.
For only $2.99 per month the app will automatically generate SKUs when you create a new product or when you update it.
If this feature is activated, when a new product is created, the app will generate the SKU using the last used template.
The automatic generation is temporarily disabled when a manual generation process is running.
Initially, both these options are disabled, to avoid accidental replacement of existing SKUs.
When you create a new product or update an existing product, please allow few seconds to have the SKU generated automatically. The generation is done in a background process. You have to refresh the product page to see the generated SKU.
Also, the app has the option to create SKUs automatically only if the product has a specific tag.
The app intercepts all new products created or updated, done manually in the Shopify admin or by any other application.
You can print retail labels for products in collections or for up to 50 selected products (from Shopify's product list, select products, then from the More actions dropdown select Print product labels)
The printing page allows you to select the label template and see a preview before printing:
The Load CSV option allows to load the products that need a label from a CSV file. The CSV file accepts the following columns: 'Barcode' and/or 'SKU', 'Variant Barcode' or 'Variant SKU' or 'product_id' or 'variant_id'. If the CSV has a column 'Print quantity' then it can be used to specify how many labels to be printed for each row in the CSV file.
Watch a short overview of this feature.
Click on the Customize selected button to go to the template customization page were you can create your own label templates:
You can create your own label design or you can copy one of the existing templates and modify it to suit your needs. The templates are using the liquid language.
Barcodes in Code-128 and EAN-13 format can be included, as well as QR codes. You also have the option of including a special QR code which encodes the URL to the product's page on your website.
Please read the application's privacy policy here, as well as the terms and conditions for providing this service.