Supplier feed glossary.
The words that come up when you keep a webshop in step with a supplier, in plain language.
Updated · Monine AS
Short answer
A supplier feed is the product data a supplier publishes for resellers. Product feed sync keeps a webshop automatically in step with it, matched by SKU, with retail prices worked out from the cost price by a markup, and manual edits protected by field locks.
Terms
- Supplier feed
- The product data a supplier publishes for its resellers: a spreadsheet, an XML file, a download link or an API. It usually holds SKU, cost price, stock, images and descriptions.
- Product feed sync
- Keeping a webshop's products automatically in step with a supplier feed, on a schedule, instead of importing by hand.
- SKU
- Stock keeping unit: the product code that identifies one sellable article. A sync matches supplier rows to shop products by SKU, so it must stay stable between exports.
- Cost price
- What the supplier charges you, normally without VAT. Your retail price is worked out from it.
- Markup
- The amount added to the cost price, as a percentage of cost. A 50% markup on 100 gives a price of 150.
- Margin
- Profit as a percentage of the selling price. A price of 150 on a cost of 100 is a 33.3% margin.
- Cost band
- A range of cost prices that gets its own markup, so cheap and expensive items are not priced with the same percentage.
- Price rounding
- Adjusting a calculated price to a price point such as .99 or a price ending in 90.
- Field lock
- A per-product setting that excludes one field — title, description, image, category, brand, price or stock — from automatic updates, so a manual edit survives.
- Dry run
- A preview of an update that lists every change it would make without writing anything to the shop.
- Price jump guard
- A check that holds back a price which moves further than an allowed percentage in one update, because it is more likely an error than a real price change.
- Catalogue shrink guard
- A check that stops a whole update when the supplier feed suddenly contains far fewer products than before, so a broken export cannot empty a shop.
- Adopted product
- A product that already existed in the shop before the sync and was taken over by SKU, usually with only stock (or stock and price) kept in step.
- Made to order
- A supplier that produces after the order and publishes a lead time instead of a stock figure; such products stay purchasable at zero stock.
- Dropshipping
- Selling products that the supplier ships directly to your customer, so the supplier's stock is effectively your stock.
- ECB reference rate
- The daily euro exchange rates published by the European Central Bank, a common neutral source for automated currency conversion.
Try it on your own products.
Free for up to 30 products, no credit card.