Consolidation is the process of taking products with the same name that exist at multiple locations as different products, and combining them into one product at multiple locations.
When should I consolidate?
Generally, when you are using multiple integrations in Thrive, you may have created your item catalog separately on each merchant account (Clover, Square, etc.).
It is often easier to manage products with the same name together, rather than separately for each integration. Consolidation may also be necessary to avoid "duplicate SKU" errors.
How are products matched across locations using the Consolidation tool?
When you have products with the same name and categories, they will be matched by our consolidation system.
In addition, neither product can have a SKU or barcode, so those may need to be deleted before starting. Both fields must be completely empty for the consolidation tool to work.
NOTE: Products with variants are NOT eligible for consolidation. Only "Simple Products" without a variant can be consolidated. Bundles are also NOT eligible for consolidation.
Differences in price, cost, PAR, and reorder are retained with location-specific entries. The product that was created first in Thrive will retain that information in the Default section, while any other version that is consolidated will be added to their respective location-specific fields.
Any product images, Vendors, shipping details, or information in the Notes field of the product that was created first in Thrive will be retained for the newly consolidated version of the product.
Different tax rates are retained at their respective locations
What happens after consolidation?
After your products are consolidated, you can use Thrive to easily manage your product across your locations on the same screen.
We also recommend checking out our Consolidated Inventory Report, which gives you a combined view of your total inventory numbers across locations. Read more about it here!
How to Consolidate Products Across Locations:
Choose the option from the "Actions" button at the top of the Products page:
Simply follow the steps to complete the consolidation process!
How can I consolidate products with variants across locations (manually) if the Consolidation tool doesn't work for me?
This will have to be a manual process, done product-by-product.
Figure out which version you want to keep.
Bring over information (counts, categories, vendor info, etc.) to the version of the product you are keeping and enable for the appropriate locations/integrations.
Delete the products that you no longer need to keep.
There are a few different ways to make this process easier. We've found that adding "DELETE" to the title of the products you'll be deleting later can be helpful. Another option is to create a new "DELETE" category or vendor for the products. That way, once you're done consolidating of information into the version you'll be keeping, you can easily bulk-delete the products you are looking to get rid of. You'll just need to search by keyword "DELETE" or filter by that new category or vendor.