The Variant catalog can be used to configure your variants, ensuring they’re treated correctly in the Forecast and Purchase workflows.

You may have active products and variants in your Shopify catalog that you don’t want to keep in stock. These variants can be excluded from the Forecast and Purchase screens by setting their “discontinued” or “dropship only” status in the variant catalog.

The "discontinued" setting indicates whether you plan to restock the variant once the existing inventory runs out. When an item is set to discontinued, it won’t be visible in the Forecast or Purchase screens and cannot be added to purchase orders. It will, however, continue to be active in Shopify until set to "Archived".

You can update an item in the variant catalog by checking the discontinued checkbox, then clicking "Save".

Alternatively, to update variants in bulk, select the relevant items then choose Bulk actions > Set discontinued. This action can also be used to change the "discontinued" setting to "false".

The "dropship only" setting specifies whether the variant is fulfilled by you or exclusively by a third party. Setting it to "true" indicates the variant is only fulfilled via a third party - if you sometimes fulfill the variant yourself, you should not check the box. "Dropship only" variants are not visible in the Forecast or Purchase screens and cannot be added to purchase orders.

To update items in bulk, select them in the variant catalog and then click Bulk actions > Set dropship only. This action can also be used to change the "dropship only" setting to "false".

Use the variant catalog to assign vendors to your variants, allowing you to add the products to purchase orders for the relevant vendor. Learn more about creating POs here.

Before you begin, you’ll need to create your vendor records. Learn more about creating vendors here.

Variants can have one or multiple vendors assigned. The “Edit vendors” column allows you to assign a new vendor to a variant. Click the + button, then select the vendor from the dropdown and click "Save".

You can also assign vendors in bulk by selecting the relevant variants, then choosing Bulk actions > Set vendor.

Choose to either replace the variants' existing vendor(s), making the selected vendor their only vendor, or add it as an additional vendor.

Click the trash icon in the “Edit vendors” column to remove a vendor from a variant.

Once a vendor is assigned to a variant, you can fill in its vendor attributes. Vendor attributes are information associated with a variant that relate to a specific vendor. These attributes are:

When creating a purchase order (PO), a variant's vendor attributes are automatically populated into the PO. However, if there's been a change, you can override the vendor reference, MOQ and cost price directly in the purchase order. Then, when saving the order you can push the updated attributes back to the catalog to be used by subsequent purchase orders. Do so by selecting "Update vendor attributes" before clicking Save.