When importing an order you can create a link from the order's line item to the product in the Shopify admin by providing the products id and variant id or by the product SKU. We recommend you link by Product SKU if possible. So let's start there...

Link Product By SKU

To link your product by SKU, you'll need to "turn" the feature on in your Imports data mapping. You can find the configuration option in the Custom Configurations section.

Once you've clicked the Link product by SKU checkbox, click the Save/Update button at the bottom of the Data Mapping page. Ensure you have also selected the product sku field in your data mapping. Once you've done this you can add the product sku on each line item and EZ Importer will look the line items by SKU.

When using the SKU field to match your products, you must make sure the SKU in your CSV file matches the SKU of a product in your Shopify Product admin. To find a products SKU go to the Products page in your Shopify admin and click one of the products in your store. Scroll down to the Inventory section of the page and make sure the SKU in your CSV file is found in the SKU (stock keeping unit) field of the product.

If the CSV column you have mapped to the line_item.sku Shopify field is not found in the SKU (stock keeping unit) field of one of your products, your import will not have a link to the product.

Note that you will need to ensure your product SKU numbers are unique. This is not enforced by Shopify and if you have multiple products with the same SKU EZ Importer could link the incorrect product. To read more about this you can look at our documentation.

What if I don't have a product SKU?

In order to map your product by the product id and variant id you need to enable the field mapping on the "Line Items" tab in your Data Mapping.

Don't forget to update the "Header Name" values to match the column name in your input file. Once you've made these changes save your "Data Mapping".

When importing orders and using the line_items.product_id and line_items.variant_id fields to link your products you'll also want to disable the Link product by SKU option. When you have this configuration option enabled EZ Importer will ignore the fields mapped to the line_items.product_id and line_items.variant_id as it will use the product_id and variant_id of the SKU you provided. To ensure things go as smooth as possible we recommend you keep the Link product by SKU option disabled when linking by product id and variant id.

Shopify expects their product id and variant id values to be provided when you map the line_items.product_id and line_items.variant_id fields. You can not provide your own product id or the product id from another platform for these values. You must provide both the line_items.product_id and the line_items.variant_id in order to successfully link your order to it's product.

Finding you products id and variant_id is tricky and if you have the SKU we recommend using the SKU as it's easier to manage. If you have no other choice and must use the product_id and variant_id you can find them two ways:

1. Go to your products page in your Shopify admin. From here click the variant you want to link. This will bring you to the variant's edit page. In the URL you can get both the product_id and the variant_id.

2. Go to your products page in your Shopify admin. If you do not have any variants, the only way to find the variant id for your product is by appending .json to the end of the product URL. For more details on how this works click here. From here search for variants on the json page. You'll see the product id and variant id for you product. You should find a variants array with an id field and a product_id field. The id field is your products variant id and the product_id field is your products id.

As you can see finding your products id and variant id is a little tricky and it could be time consuming if you have a lot of products in your store. This is why we recommend you link your products by the SKU.

Successful Product Link On Order

After you've successfully uploaded your orders you should see a link in the Shopify admin to the product on your imported order. As you can see below the line item has a link to the product. Since we provided a SKU with our example below the SKU is also displayed on the order.

Troubleshooting Errors

When importing the SKU data and trying to get it to link to the order there are a few things that can go wrong.  They're generally easy to identify and fix.  If you have the Link By SKU option enabled and your product doesn't have a hyper link on the order, you know something went wrong.  Here is a list of things to look at if you are running into problems:

1. Do you have the product id or variant id mapped?  If you have have the Link By SKU option enabled and you are are mapping either the product id or variant id of your products the hyper link will not work.  This is because Shopify requires you to provide the product id AND variant id when linking a product on the order.  EZ Importer makes this easy by allowing you to provide the SKU.  When you enable the Link By SKU option EZ Importer looks up your product by the SKU and updates the product id AND variant id fields on the Line Items tab.  However, if you provide the product id or variant id EZ Importer will not look up the product by SKU as it assumes you want to use the fields in your CSV file.  If you are trying to Link By SKU, DO NOT map the product id or variant id fields as EZ Importer will fill these in using the values found on the product when it looks it up using the SKU.
2. If you do not have the product id or variant id mapped the most likely issue is the SKU the case does not match what's in your Shopify Product admin.  SKU's are case sensitive by nature so they must match exactly when using the Link By SKU option.  We mention this in the documentation above as well.  You'll want to make sure the SKU in your CSV file and on your products match EXACTLY.
3. The last thing to check is to make sure the SKU is properly setup in your store.  If the SKU you provided in your file is not found in the store we can not link your products.  Make sure the product SKU field is filled out in your Shopify admin.
4. If you've tried all of these solutions and are still having problems, don't hesitate to reach out and let us know.  We're always happy to try and help!