Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with some common terminology used to describe the functions of MultiChannelWorks:
Product Database – Your product catalog inside of your MultiChannelWorks account.
SKU – A ‘Stock Keeping Unit’ or ‘SKU’ for short is basically the inventory management and retail industry term that refers to a product identifier code. Every product entered into your MultiChannelWorks account must have a unique product code (SKU) as a unique identifier. You could think of your product SKU’s as being short codes to identify each product and without needing to type the full product name and brand name out every time a product is referenced.
Sales Channels – (Sometimes described as ‘Connections’ or ‘Marketplaces’) Sales channels are the websites where you advertise your listings for sale, for example eBay, Amazon or shopping carts like Woocommerce and Magento etc.
Inventory – Your physical stock of products
Channel Listings – These are the advertisements or ‘Listings’ that are listed on your marketplace accounts.
Fulfillment Center – A third party company that runs a warehouse where you’re able to store your inventory and have the company pick, pack and ship your orders on your behalf. Sometimes we refer to fulfillment centers as ‘fulfillment hubs’ since you’re able to subscribe to use these centers as your own ‘hubs’ to store your inventory in different regions around the world and deliver your orders regionally and globally.
Stockroom – We refer to ‘Stockroom’ as your own in-house physical warehouse or ‘stock room’ where your products are stored. (unlike a ‘fulfillment center’ which is a third party warehouse that stores your products on your behalf, your ‘stockroom’ refers to your own area where you store your inventory yourself).
Mapping – We refer to ‘mapping’ as being the method of ‘linking’ or ‘mapping data’ from one set of data to another set of data, so that when one set of data is referenced in one system, other systems can also reference the same data.
For example; Your products are ‘mapped’ from your MultiChannelWorks database to the products in your listings on your marketplace accounts.
For example; Shipping methods can be ‘mapped’ from marketplaces shipping method data to MultiChannelWorks shipping methods.