Building references is a comparison of a product from the Main Feed and a product from the supplier’s feed, and the subsequent updating of the product from the Main Feed with a product from the supplier’s feed using the constructed reference.
Why do this?
Sometimes the same product may have a different SKU and other characteristics. The SKU created by the manufacturer may differ from the SKU at the seller, or the name of the product may be in different languages in different price lists, or supplied from different places, etc. References between products help to avoid duplicates on the site and correctly make a margin, taking into account the minimum purchase price of suppliers (the minimum prices can also be seen in the Summary report, if references are configured).
There will be one product on the site (no erroneous repetition) with a margin on the supplier’s minimum price.
There are two types of references — made manually and automatically. In practice, this is, as a rule, a combination of both options, when the automatic algorithm works first, and then what is not automatically linked is completed manually.
Building references automatically
In the personal account of the user of the yfifx service, in the menu, click on Functions and select “Build references” from the drop-down list.
References between products are made according to the article (the best option), name or other data. In the settings, specify between which supplier feed to create a reference now (1), select the field for referring (2) and start the process (3).
After the end of the process of building references, the “Preview of references built by process” window opens. In this window, you can save all created references to the base or delete references:
After building references, products with reference change the color of the plus sign — from gray, it turns green. When you click on the plus sign, a plate about the product appears, in which you can see in the feed of which supplier this product is and what the purchase price and the sales price (in this example, with a 10% markup).
Even if the product in the updated feed of the supplier disappears and then reappears, the reference will be restored. That is why, within any supplier’s feed, you can selectively delete or all products, but not the supplier’s feed itself (the supplier’s feed is removed from the list of feeds by clicking on Remove on the right in the feed page). If you completely delete the supplier’s feed itself, then all data from the system will disappear, and you will have to reload the supplier’s feed, set the correspondence of fields and create reference between the products of this supplier’s feed and others.
Building references manually
To set up the reference between the products of the Main Feed and the supplier’s feed:
- Select a product in the supplier’s feed and click on “+” (1);
- Click on “Add reference” (2);
- In the window that opens, select the supplier’s feed with which you are making a reference (3);
- Select the desired product from the list or search for it using the search bar on the right (4)
- Select the desired product (5);
- Click “Add reference” (6).
