Getting started with Product Data Management

Learn how to set up your product reference data in SKUtrak

🕐 Before you start

Product Master and Product Matching are included in the Essential plan.
To follow this guide, you must be your organisation's "Owner" or have the "Product Master Manager" and "Product Matching Manager" roles assigned.

This guide walks you through the steps required to set up your product reference data on SKUtrak. Check out our introductory guide here for more on product reference data and the challenges SKUtrak helps to address.

Prefer to learn by video? Check out our video guide below:

There are four simple steps to follow to set up your product reference data in SKUtrak:

Step 1: Prepare your product definitions for upload

Before starting in SKUtrak, you must compile a list of your product definitions to upload. These definitions should include:

Unique Code: a unique identifier for the product. We highly recommend that you use an internal code for this which is already used within your business.
Description: a short description of the product.
Category, SubCategory and Brand: your internal product classifications for use in SKUtrak. If you have a different internal hierarchy with additional tiers, you must select three to act as your Category, Subcategory and Brand within SKUtrak. Other fields can be added as additional attributes. We recommend that you keep your hierarchies distinct, i.e. products in the same Subcategory should not have a different Category, but SKUtrak does not enforce this.
Additional attributes: any other information you would like to store against your products for analysis or consumption by other teams or systems. Examples include product flavour, pack size, weight or case size. Additional attributes are not shown on SKUtrak dashboards but are available through DataShare.

These definitions will often exist already in a master spreadsheet or another business system. If not, you may need to spend some time thinking about your products, how you would like to classify them and any attributes you would like to store against them.

Once you have your definitions, you need to convert them into a format that's ready for upload onto SKUtrak. To do this:

Add your definitions to a spreadsheet with columns for your unique code, description, category, Subcategory, brand, and other attributes.
Ensure each row contains one product definition and products aren't duplicated. If a unique code appears more than once, your file will cause an error on upload.
Save your spreadsheet as a CSV file. To do this on Excel, go to File>Save As and then select "CSV (comma delimited)" in the "Save as type" box.

Step 2: Create the required product attributes

Before you can upload your definitions, you need to make SKUtrak aware of the attributes that you are planning to store against them.

SKUtrak comes with the following attributes by default:

Description: description of the product
Category: the product's category
Subcategory: the product's Subcategory
Brand: the product's brand
Base unit: the units in which quantities of the product are measured, e.g 'kg'
Net quantity: the total quantity of the product, measured in its base unit, e.g 0.25
Individual units: the number of individual units included within the pack on-shelf
GTIN: the product's Global Trade Item Number

If you have any other attributes beyond the eight listed above in your file, you must add them to SKUtrak before your products can be uploaded.

To add an attribute, head to Product Master>Attributes and select "+ Create Attribute". From there, you can give the attribute a name and description, select its type, and mark whether it's required. View our guide for more on creating attributes ***INSERT LINK***.

💡 Be careful marking attributes as 'required'

Only mark an attribute as required if you expect it to be completed for every product. If an attribute is marked as required, any rows within your file which do not have a value for that attribute will not be uploaded.

Step 3: Upload your product definitions

With your file ready and your attributes created, you can now upload your product definitions to SKUtrak.

To upload your products:

Head to Product Master>Products and click "UPLOAD PRODUCT"
Select the file you created in Step 1 and click "Confirm"
Map the column headers in your file to your created attributes. Click the "X" on any non-required attributes you don't want to include.
Click "Upload" to load the definitions.
🎉 Done! You should see your definitions on the "Products" page.

💡 How to deal with existing product definitions when uploading

If your organisation is already using product master, you may already have some product definitions loaded. You will see these when you navigate to Product Master>Products. How to deal with this depends mostly on the unique codes used:

If the unique codes in your existing products match those you are uploading, continue with your upload. Any products with existing unique codes which also appear in your file will be overwritten, with their attribute values replaced by those in your file.
If the unique codes do not match, your products won't be overwritten, and you will likely end up with duplicates that will be complicated to manage. In these instances, we recommend deleting your existing product definitions before uploading. To delete them:
1. Use the "Export" button in the top right of the Products table to take a backup of your existing definitions. Make sure you select "All data" in the pop-up.
2. Select all products on-page by selecting the check box in the top-left of the Products table.
3. Click "DELETE" in the top-right of the Products table
4. Repeat for each page in your Products table until all products are deleted.

Step 4: Match your retailer products to your uploaded definitions

Now that you have loaded your product definitions, the final step is linking your definitions to retailer product definitions in your data feeds. The best way to do this depends on whether you already have a file containing mappings between the retailer's product codes and your internal codes.

If you already have Retailer Code to Unique Code mappings:

You can upload these mappings in bulk using the "Upload Matches" feature. Head to the Product Matching article and follow the "How to upload product matches" guide.

You may find that some products remain in the "Pending" section once you have uploaded your matches. Follow the manual matching steps outlined below to match these remaining products.

If you don't already have Retailer Code to Unique Code mappings:

If you don't have a file, you must manually create the matches. Thankfully, SKUtrak has some in-built AI to help speed things up. When you select a retailer product to match, SKUtrak will automatically suggest which of your product definitions looks like the closest match. You can often confirm the suggestion, saving the need for a manual search.

To match your products in this way, head to the Product Matching article and follow the "How to use the Quick Match function to match products" guide.

When you've finished matching, that's it! 🎉

Now that your products are loaded and matched, they'll come through in your SKUtrak dashboards and DataShare after the next update - usually, this will be the next day. To make use of your mappings, check out our guide on how to flip between the retailer's definitions and those you have uploaded.

After that, it's just a case of keeping them current. We recommend re-uploading your product definitions on a semi-frequent basis to ensure any new products are added and checking the Product Matching>Pending page weekly or monthly for any new retailer product codes that need to be matched.