🔗 How To: Connect Your Products with Suppliers
Ideally, your e-commerce platform or ERP pushes all supplier data directly into Optiply. However, when your integration is not able to automatically sync the relationship between your products and your suppliers, you will need to connect them yourself in Optiply.
Integration failures can occur due to various reasons, such as incorrect configurations, missing data, or delays in synchronization processes. If your products and suppliers are not linked, the system cannot generate purchase advice.
Here are the steps to set up these connections quickly and easily.
🏢 Step 1: Create Your Suppliers First
Crucial Rule: Make sure your suppliers are fully created in Optiply before you attempt to create the relationship with your products!
First, validate whether your integration already creates suppliers automatically. If it does not, you need to share the names of your suppliers with Optiply:
Via the Front-End: You can add them manually on the Suppliers page.
Via CSV File: You can do this in bulk by uploading a
.csvfile. (For detailed file creation instructions, see our dedicated article on CSV imports).
Setup Checklist for New Suppliers:
Ensure the supplier is not set to 'Ignore' in the system.
Provide essential details like the Delivery Time and Manual Order Period.
📦 Step 2: Connect the Products to the Suppliers
Once your suppliers exist in the system, you can start linking your catalog to them.
Via the Front-End: You can connect individual products directly within the Optiply dashboard.
Via CSV File: For bulk actions, you can send us (or import) a
.csvfile containing the products and their respective supplier relationships.
Troubleshooting the Connection: If you link a product but it still isn't generating purchase advice, ensure that the linked products meet these requirements:
They have a valid historical sales history.
(WooCommerce Users): They are not marked as 'unlimited_stock' or set to 'Disabled' in WooCommerce, as this prevents Optiply from managing them.
⚙️ Step 3: Finalize the Supplier Setup
After setting up the suppliers and successfully connecting them to your products, you are almost ready to start purchasing!
To complete the configuration, you need to finalize the specific ordering rules (like minimum order values and lot sizes). Please follow the final steps outlined in our article: The Supplier Setup.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why am I getting an error when uploading my CSV file?
The most common reason for a CSV upload failure is trying to link products to a supplier that does not exist in Optiply yet. Always double-check that you completed Step 1 and that the supplier names in your file match the system exactly (including spelling and capitalization).
Will my manual links be overwritten by my integration?
If your integration does not support syncing product-supplier relationships, your manual links in Optiply are safe. However, if your integration is supposed to sync this data but is currently failing, fixing the integration later might overwrite your manual Optiply configurations with the data from your source system.
Can I link one product to multiple suppliers?
Yes! Optiply supports multi-vendor strategies. You can link a single product to several different suppliers, allowing you to choose the best vendor based on lead time or pricing when placing a purchase order.