Mapping supplier brands and categories

Every supplier names their brands and categories their own way. The Mapping tab on a supplier connection lets you decide what each of their labels becomes on your store, so imported products land where your customers already browse.

Considerations

• Mapping is set per supplier. Each connection has its own Mapping tab.
• Orbit reads the mapping when products are imported, so it is worth setting before the catalogue lands.
• A table stays empty until products from that supplier are in the catalogue. The empty table reads Nothing to map yet.
• The tab holds four tables, and each one saves on its own.

Open the Mapping tab

1. From your Orbit dashboard, go to Suppliers.
2. Click Active.
3. Find the supplier and click Manage.
4. Click Mapping, the third tab.

The tab opens on Brand mapping, with Category mapping, Custom field mapping and Shipping classes below it.

Map a supplier brand to one of yours

1. In the Brand mapping table, find the supplier brand you want to route.
2. In the Store brand column, click the dropdown on that row.
3. Pick one of your own brands, or leave the row on Auto-create on import.
4. Repeat for every brand you want to point somewhere.
5. Click Save mappings under the Brand mapping table. The message Mappings saved appears.

Map a supplier category to one of yours

The Category mapping table works the same way and routes the supplier's categories into the taxonomy you use on your storefront. Rows are ordered by product count, so the categories holding the most products are at the top.

1. In the Category mapping table, find the supplier category.
2. In the Store category column, click the dropdown. It lists your store's categories only, never the supplier's.
3. Pick the category their products should land in.
4. Click Save mappings under the Category mapping table.

You can send several of the supplier's categories to one of yours. Point All Storage, Impulse Storage and Wooden Storage at your Storage category and all three feed the same shelf, instead of leaving you with four near-duplicates.

Note: A row left on Auto-create on import does not always create something new. If your store already has a category with that name, the products go into it, and the supplier's image, description and SEO text fill any of those fields you left blank. A category you have mapped by hand is left exactly as it is.

Map custom fields and shipping classes

The two tables below work in the same way.

• Custom field mapping: binds the supplier's product custom fields to fields you already have under a different name. Columns are Supplier field and Store field.
• Shipping classes: matches the supplier's shipping class labels to yours. Columns are Supplier shipping class and Your shipping class.

Anything left unmapped in either table is created on your store on first import.

What each column shows

• Supplier brand and Supplier category: the label as it appears in the supplier's catalogue.
• Products: how many of the supplier's products carry that label.
• Store brand and Store category: where that label lands on your store.
• Auto-create on import: the default. The label is matched or created for you the first time products are imported.
• Source no longer in catalogue: a row marked this way is a label the supplier has stopped using.

Save or reset a table

Each of the four tables has its own Reset and Save mappings pair. Both stay greyed out until you change a dropdown in that table.

• Save mappings: saves every row in that table, not only the rows you changed.
• Reset: drops your changes and puts the table back to its last saved values.

Warning: The four tables save separately. If you edit two tables and click one Save mappings, only that table is saved. Save each table before you leave the tab.

Related guides

• Connecting to a supplier
• Importing products from a supplier
• Controlling what stays in sync with a supplier
• Reviewing supplier updates