Introduction
Core concepts
A short dictionary for the words that come up everywhere else, like the difference between your account and your organization, or a listing and a product.
Ready for Commerce is an ecosystem, and it currently has two products. The PIM is where you keep information about the things you sell. The Repricer sets the price you charge in each place you sell them. The same people use both, inside the same business, over the same connected accounts, so the two share most of their vocabulary.
Most of that vocabulary is plain English. A handful of words mean something narrower here than they do in conversation. Those are the ones that cost you an afternoon later. Your account is not your organization, a listing is not a product, and cost is four numbers instead of one.
This page defines each word once, grouped by the screen you meet it on. Nothing here is a task, and where a word has a page of its own the definition points you at it.
The two typefaces below mean different things. A word in this typeface is a label you will see on screen, spelled the way the app spells it. A word in bold is the idea behind the label, which the app may never print anywhere.
The five words to learn first
Those five are enough to follow most of what you will read. Everything below is the rest of the vocabulary, grouped by where you meet it, so you can read the one section you need and skip the others.
Account, organization and team
An account is a person and an organization is a business. Mixing up the two is the most common setup mistake there is. It leaves you with a second, empty organization you cannot merge into the first.
The words for who you are
You can be in several organizations and have a different role in each. Nothing is copied between them, so a product you create in one does not appear in the other, and neither does a connected account.
Signing up on your own instead of accepting an invitation creates a second, empty organization. It does not add you to the first one, and there is no way to merge the two later.
Why you have two roles
Your role in the organization and your role inside a product are set separately, from two different lists of names. Both are on the Team page of your account at account.readyforcommerce.com.
The organization list is Owner, Admin and Member, and it decides who can invite people and who can change the subscription. Each product has a list of its own, and the two do not use the same one. The PIM has Admin, Manager and Editor. The Repricer has those three plus Analyst. So you can be a Member of the organization and an Admin in the PIM at the same time, and neither one tells you anything about the other. Every level is written out in team, roles and permissions.
Integrations, accounts and channels
Connecting a product to somewhere you sell takes two steps, and the words for them are different. First you authorize the connection. Then you add the store or seller account you actually have there. The app calls that second thing an account, which is the same word it uses for the person signing in, so the table below keeps them apart.
The words for a connection
You do not create a region. Every connected account reports the ones it sells on, and you switch off the ones you do not want.
Running the same seller account through both products means authorizing it twice, once in each. The PIM and the Repricer are separate applications with credentials of their own, so connecting Amazon in one does not connect it in the other. You pair the two accounts later, and the Repricer connection covers what happens when you do.
The kinds of place you can connect
Open Integrations in the sidebar and what you can connect is split into sections. Each section heading is a kind, and the kind tells you what sort of place you get under it.
Which integrations you find under each heading depends on which product you are in, because the two do not share a list. Integrations has the current one for each.
Sync, push and pull
Data moves in both directions once an account is connected, and three words describe it.
Sync is how you stop selling something in one place without stopping it everywhere. From Catalog in the sidebar, open a product, a brand or a category. Hover the badge for the account at the top of the dialog that opens over the page, and the switch is beside the account name.
Turning it off on a product asks what should happen to what is already published there. Which answers you get depends on the channel, and publishing goes through them. A brand or a category gets one answer, because the record the PIM made over there is deleted. Leaving a product live means the listing goes on selling on the channel, with the PIM no longer touching it. The switch works one record at a time and one account at a time, and there is no way to keep a single field back.
Publishing to Amazon sends your offer: condition, price and availability. The product text there is shared by everyone selling that item, so the PIM never writes it in either direction.
The catalog
The catalog is the PIM’s description of everything you sell. It is the version you edit, and every connected account is published from it, so a change you make once goes to everywhere you have Sync turned on.
What a catalog is made of
Two of those decide what the others do. A product’s categories decide which specification groups it gets, and giving a product options is what splits it into variants. Everything else attaches wherever you put it.
Where a field goes once a product has variants
The product has what is true of the thing itself: its title, its description, its images, its brand and its categories. A variant has what is true of one particular version of it: its own price, its own barcode, its own stock number, its own dimensions.
So the moment you give a product options, those fields move down to the variants and the product is left with only what they share. On a product with no options you never see the move happen, because the product editor shows the fields and those fields are on its one variant.
Status
Every product has one status, and it decides whether the product goes to a channel at all. You set it in the product editor: go to Catalog in the sidebar, open Products and click a product.
What has to be unique, and how widely
A slug is the web-safe version of a name, lowercased with hyphens for the spaces. A brand is unique across your whole organization on both its name and its slug, and so is a tag on its name. A specification group is unique on its name across the organization, a definition on its name inside its group, and a value on its name inside its definition.
A category is the exception. Its name and its slug are unique among the categories sharing the same parent, not across the whole catalog. So you can have Accessories under Phones and another Accessories under Laptops.
Why a product with no options still behaves as though it had a variant
In your products table, a product without options shows 0 in the Total Variants column and No in Has Variants, so as far as the app is concerned it has none. The price, the barcode and the stock number you typed are still on a variant underneath it.
You never create that variant and you never see it named. The only place it shows through is an export, where such a product comes out as one row with everything on it instead of two.
Identifiers, and what a SKU does
An identifier is a code that lets something outside the PIM recognize what you sell. A scanner reads a barcode, Amazon matches an ASIN, and every integration you connect finds your variant by its SKU.
You add them in the Identifiers section of the product editor. From Catalog, open Products and click a product: the section is one list, and each row in it opens with a Type dropdown giving you six choices.
The six types
There is no separate UPC, EAN or MPN type. A barcode of any of those shapes goes under Barcode, and an MPN goes under Part Number. Searching the dropdown for either one finds nothing, and identifiers has the length and check-digit rules each type accepts.
What the SKU does that the others do not
The SKU decides more than the rest. It is how the PIM and the Repricer recognize the same thing once you have connected both, and it is the only field they match on. Give one variant a different SKU in each product and neither one will find the other.
Where a match is found, the Repricer marks it. Open Listings in the Repricer sidebar and click one, then go to its Pricing tab. A Managed by PIM badge is beside Unit Cost under Cost of Goods and beside MAP and MSRP under Manufacturer Pricing. Those three values become read-only there, and you change them in the PIM instead. The Repricer connection covers what else crosses.
Prices, costs and stock
Money in the PIM is set on the variant and never on the product, because two versions of the same thing can sell at different prices. A product with no options has one variant, so its fields appear in the product editor and you never have to think about the difference. Give that product options and the Pricing section moves: the product loses it, and each variant gets one of its own.
To get to them, go to Catalog in the sidebar, open Products and click a product: the Pricing section is in the editor that opens. Inventory is just under it.
The five money fields
All five are in one currency, and the Currency on the same variant tells you which one. Pricing covers selling in more than one.
Why cost is four numbers
Your units can come from more than one place, and they do not cost you the same from each. So the PIM stores a cost for each of three sources and calculates a fourth from those.
Why stock is four numbers
Stock splits the same three ways, plus a fourth the PIM calculates. Only one of the three is yours to type, and that catches people. The PIM counts your own units for you, so On-hand Stock is a read-out where On-hand Cost was a box you fill in.
Fallback Stock is the only one of the four you type. The other two fill themselves back in on their own. The fourth is calculated, so most of Inventory is a read-out and not a form. None of the four appears until you turn on Track Inventory, the switch at the top of the Inventory section, and inventory goes through all of them.
How the last two are calculated
Reading those two together tells you something neither table above says on its own. The PIM picks Effective Cost by looking at your stock, so your cost can move when nothing about your costs has changed.
Effective Cost is the number the Repricer gets, and it follows whichever source has stock. A unit arriving or leaving can change it with no price edited and no cost edited.
Listings, strategies and price limits
The Repricer does not work on your products. It works on listings, and a listing is one product offered in one place at one price. The same product on Amazon and on Walmart is two listings, each with its own price and its own competition.
You never create one. Every listing comes from a connected account, which is why Listings in the Repricer sidebar is empty until you connect one.
What a listing has on it
You choose a Strategy per listing. You build one from Strategies in the Repricer sidebar, where Create strategy opens a wizard. Where you sell next to other sellers, Target price and Pricing mode are the two headings on that wizard’s Pricing step. On your own storefront the same step asks for a Pricing method instead, because there is no shared offer to measure against.
Where the price is allowed to go
A strategy can only move a price between two numbers, and both are on the listing itself. From Listings in the Repricer sidebar, click a listing, go to its Pricing tab, and find the Price Limits section.
Minimum Price is either a number you type or one the strategy calculates for you, and the Price Floor step of the wizard is where you choose which. A calculated floor is built from your cost, the profit or the margin you want to keep, and the fees the channel charges. Fees are estimated on Amazon, Walmart and eBay. Everywhere else the floor is built without them, so it is only as good as the cost behind it.
The rest of a strategy
Where you sell next to other sellers offering the same item, that place reports the competing offers and you add nothing. On your own storefront there is no shared item and no list of rival offers, so the Competitors tab is the only place a competitor price can come from.
Moving data in and out
Four words cover everything that moves, and swapping them by accident is easy. The first three are tabs under Uploads in the PIM sidebar.
An import and a data source differ in one way that costs data. When a cell in your file is empty, an import leaves that field alone. A data source clears it. A supplier feed is meant to be the current truth about the fields it owns, so a blank in it means your supplier no longer has a value.
Imports, exports and data sources each have a page of their own.