SKUs

Connecting your CMS to transactional commerce, digital and infinite-stock products included

SKUs are the link between your product catalog and Commerce Layer. Each SKU can have prices across multiple price lists and stock items across many locations. Two flags let you handle digital and infinite-stock products.

What is a SKU?

SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit. It is a unique identifier for a specific product variant, used to track availability and stock variations of an item (e.g., the Medium or Large size of a jogger pant).

Commerce Layer is not a content management system

Commerce Layer handles the transactional side of commerce, leaving all product, category, and catalog information to the CMS of your choice. The SKU code is the link between the two — tied to a single variant, not to a generic "product".

A SKU consists of letters and numbers (EAN code, UPC, or any other format), such as LSLEEVMM000000FFFFFFMXXX. It identifies each variant's characteristics: manufacturer name, brand, style, color, weight, size, and more.

Each SKU can have one or more prices in one or more price lists, and many stock items across many stock locations. The presence of both a price and a stock item determines the SKU's availability for a given market or customer group.

Digital products

SKUs usually refer to physical goods ready to be shipped to the customer. That's the most common case, but not the only one.

Commerce Layer offers two flags for handling other scenarios:

• Do not ship — prevents shipment creation when the SKU is added to an order. The relationship with a shipping category is optional in this case.

• Do not track — makes the SKU always available regardless of stock levels.

Combining these two flags lets you handle scenarios such as intangible products that generate no shipment and products with a virtually infinite stock.