Common questions about importing products, setting up filters, managing variants, and syncing data with SupplyMaster.

Go to View Products → Edit Filters. You can add product filters (e.g., Brand Name, Style Number, Category) and variant filters (e.g., Color Name, Size) to control exactly which items are imported.

Products may appear by default depending on your supplier configuration. Go to View Products → Edit Filters to include or exclude specific brands or products. Without filters, your supplier’s entire catalog may be imported. Always configure filters before enabling Auto Import.

Use the Contains Any condition. Add a product filter for Brand Name, set the condition to Contains Any, and enter your brands separated by commas (e.g., Sport-Tek, Nike, New Era). All products matching any of the listed brands will be included.

Use the Not Equal To Any condition. Add a product filter for Brand Name (or Mill, depending on your supplier), set the condition to Not Equal To Any, and enter the brands to exclude. All products except those brands will be included.

Add a product filter for Style Number (or Part Number), set the condition to Contains Any, and enter a comma-separated list of style IDs (e.g., PTS30, PTS20, 112P). This is more efficient than creating multiple separate filters.

Use variant filters. Go to Edit Filters, add a Variant Filter, and select the attribute (e.g., Color Name or Size Name). Set the condition to Equal To Any or Contains Any and enter your values. For example:

Both filters combined with “And” import only variants matching both conditions.

Yes. Filters determine which products SupplyMaster actively manages and syncs. If you remove a product from your filters and run a sync, that product will no longer receive inventory or pricing updates. It remains in your Shopify store but is no longer managed by SupplyMaster.

Use a single filter with all style numbers separated by commas (e.g., PTS30, PTS20, 112P) with the Contains Any or Equal To Any condition. This is easier to manage than multiple separate filters connected by “OR.”

Create a second supplier connection for the alternate version and add all relevant styles to that supplier. This maintains distinct product listings while keeping inventory synced for both through SupplyMaster.

No. In the supplier’s database and in Shopify, each variant is defined by the full combination of color and size. SKUs, barcodes, prices, and weights are all tied to complete variant combinations. You must sync the full variant set, but you can use variant filters to limit which sizes and colors are included.

Use a variant filter for Size Name set to Equal To Any with only the sizes you want (e.g., S, M, L, XL). You can do the same for Color Name. This gives you a curated catalog with only the variants you want to sell. You can also hide the size selector on your storefront using theme customization if needed.

No. SupplyMaster requires a paid Shopify plan. Development and trial stores are not supported.

Each unique combination of size, color, and other options is one variant. A t-shirt with 5 sizes and 20 colors = 100 variants (5 × 20). Your subscription tier is based on total variant count.

A product update is one refresh of a variant’s data (inventory, price, fields) from the supplier. If you have 3,000 variants syncing daily, that’s 3,000 updates per day or about 90,000 per month.

Almost certainly not. Shopify now supports 2,048 variants per product for all stores, which is enough to handle virtually every supplier product without splitting. Variant splitting is a legacy feature that exists only to support stores that originally imported products under the old 100-variant limit and already have split products in their store. New setups do not need it. See our Variant Splitting (Legacy Feature) article for details.

Once your Shopify store reaches 50,000 variants, Shopify caps new variant uploads at 1,000 per day on non-Plus stores. SupplyMaster handles this automatically — with Auto Sync on, variants are created daily over time, and merchants have scaled to 100,000+ variants this way. Shopify Plus stores are not subject to this cap. See our Shopify's Daily Variant Creation Limit article.

SupplyMaster does not support changing which image is the default/featured image. Image URLs can be imported as metafields, but they won’t replace the main product image.

Shopify allows only one image per variant by default. You can import additional image URLs (e.g., side and back images) as metafields using Match Fields, then display them on your storefront with theme customization. See our Displaying Supplier Data on Your Shopify Theme article.

The most reliable fix is to delete those products from your Shopify store. SupplyMaster will recreate them with complete data (including images) on the next sync — as long as the styles still match your filters and you have room under your plan variant limit (or deleting them frees enough room). Waiting for a sync to fix missing images on existing products may not work unless Always Update Variant Images is enabled. See Deleting & Archiving Products below for recreate-at-cap caveats.

Yes. Newly imported products always receive images on their first import, regardless of Update Settings. The “All Fields Except Images” setting only applies to existing products that have been in your store for more than 2 hours. This grace period ensures new products are fully populated.

Check the Sync History tab for status updates. If you see a failed import or the issue persists for more than an hour, contact support. Common causes include temporary supplier API issues, large catalog sizes, or subscription limits being reached.

SupplyMaster does not have a built-in option for this. However, you can bulk-edit products in Shopify to enable “Continue selling when sold out.”

Different suppliers have different product IDs, APIs, and data formats. Shopify treats imported products from a new supplier as new products. To manage duplicates, turn on auto-archive for the old supplier, modify its filters so no products are selected, and run a sync to archive old products. You will still need to reassign metafields, categories, and collections on the new products.

Go to Edit Supplier → Inventory Settings. Select the Shopify location and choose which supplier warehouse to map. Warehouse-level inventory is supported for:

SanMar and other suppliers currently provide only total inventory quantities, not warehouse-level breakdowns.

Inventory levels are visible in your Shopify admin but are not automatically displayed to storefront visitors. To show stock levels to customers, customize your theme or use a Shopify app. See this Shopify Community discussion.

This is a Shopify setting, not a SupplyMaster feature. Turn on inventory tracking, then use automated collection conditions so only products with inventory greater than zero appear — or use Shopify Flow to unpublish when stock reaches zero and republish when it returns. See Shopify’s guide on hiding out of stock products.

Do not use Action on Unavailable Products for this. Auto-archive applies when a product leaves the supplier catalog or no longer matches your filters — not when inventory is zero.

SupplyMaster does not bulk-delete Shopify products for you. Use filters plus archive, then delete in Shopify when you need to remove a brand, free variant headroom, or stop products from coming back.

Yes. If the products are still in the supplier’s catalog and still match your active filters, SupplyMaster will recreate them on the next sync. To prevent this, update your filters to exclude those products before deleting them from Shopify.

This method is safe (archive first, delete second) and prevents SupplyMaster from recreating those products on future syncs.

When Sync History shows Plan variant creation limit reached, SupplyMaster stops creating new variants until you have headroom again. To free space without upgrading:

You can also add variant capacity or upgrade under Manage Subscriptions. See our Plans, Pricing, & Account Limits article. This is separate from Shopify’s daily upload cap on large non-Plus stores — see Shopify's Daily Variant Creation Limit.

Delete-then-recreate is useful for a single broken product (for example missing images or incomplete variants) when you still want that style in your catalog.

Steps: confirm the style is still in your filters → delete the product in Shopify → run Import Products (or wait for auto sync). For missing images on existing products, also see the Images section above.

The Auto Create Products & Variants setting (in Edit Supplier → Automatic Sync) offers four levels:

This setting can be configured per supplier and applies to both automatic and manual imports.

Go to Match Fields, find the Vendor row, click Modify, and enter your custom vendor name or a Liquid formula.

SanMar specification PDF links can be mapped to a product metafield using Match Fields. After importing, display the PDF links on your storefront using Custom Liquid in your theme. See this Shopify Community discussion for implementation examples.

If you have questions or need assistance, contact support on chat in the bottom-right corner of the app.