Overview
The Modern Retail Integrator collects information from various fields in your POS system, and sends that information down to your ecommerce platform. While there may be some variance in the exact set of fields we use, depending on your ecommerce platform, POS system, and what integration features you're using, in this article we're going to go over the "standard" fields we use most often.
Product Flow
Before we get into a list of fields, let's briefly go over how we handle products & product data. Products flow from your POS/ERP system to your ecommerce platform. Then, products are loaded from your ecommerce platform into our product staging table. The staging table has a column correlating to every potential field we use; depending on the POS, many of these columns remain empty, as there's no relevant data to insert.
Standard Fields/Product Staging Table Columns
The following is a semi-exhaustive list of the staging table columns we use. Again, not all of these are used for every integration.
- ALU
- This is the "style name" used to group "gridded" or "matrix" products, ie products with selectable options like color, size, or material.
- CustomSKU
- This is an alternate form of ALU, used by our RICS integrations.
- ListID
- This is the integration ID, or unique identifier, of sellable product from the POS/ERP system.
- Desc1
- This is used for the name of the product.
- Desc2
- This is used for the short description for the product.
- Desc3
- This is used for the long description for the product.
- Desc4
- This is used for an additional description of the product.
- Brand
- This is the brand name, or manufacturer name.
- DepartmentListID
- This is theoretically used for the department or category name, however we do not map department information to the ecommerce platform.
- Attribute, ItemSize
- These are option values we specifically use for POS/ERP systems that only offer 2 dimension grids with no info on what the option values are named. Attribute is usually used for/hardcoded to "color", and ItemSize for size.
- OptionAname, OptionAvalue
- Fields used for options in POS/ERP systems that support up to three options with provided option names.
- We also have OptioBname, OptionBvalue and OptionCname, OptionCvalue
- We currently only support up to 3 option dropdowns
- Price
- The regular selling price
- Price2
- Suggested retail
- Price3
- Sale or markdown price
- SaleStart, SaleEnd
- Start and end dates for the sale price. This is only supported by a handful of POS/ERP systems and ecommerce platforms, so we often make up dates to ensure sales stay on until we're told to turn them off.
- For a sale to be valid, the current date must be between SaleStart and SaleEnd. Time is not used to calculate this.
- UPC
- Barcode/UPC/EAN. This is not validated, so we often get non-UPC values here from the POS/ERP.
- PartNumber
- Often known as "MPN"
- TimeModified
- The last update seen from the POS/ERP system.
- isDeleted
- Certain POS/ERP systems (RICS) can send us a delete notice, which will set this flag and exclude the item from being seen or used.
- Can be used as an undoable "Soft delete".
Additionally, there are a handful of fields not included on this list that we no longer use, for a variety of reasons. If you're interested or need to learn more, please feel free to contact us with a support request.