Suppliers and feeds

Most of the catalog comes from suppliers’ data feeds rather than being typed in. A feed is the connection to one supplier: its product list, costs, print prices and, for some, stock. Smooth reads it, holds a copy of everything the supplier offers, and lets you choose what to sell. Once a product is in the catalog, the feed keeps it up to date.

Feeds and everything on these pages apply to the whole catalog, not to one site. Which sites show a published product is decided by each site’s content rules.

Everything here needs the Catalog editor, Manager or Super admin role.

From feed to live product

Step	What happens	Who does it
1. Sync	The feed is read and every product it lists appears under Supplier products as New	The schedule, or Sync now
2. Map	The feed’s own categories are mapped to ours	You, once per category: category mapping
3. Add to catalog	Chosen products become draft catalog products with variants, costs, branding, text and categories. Photos and documents download in the background	You: adding products
4. Check and publish	You look over the draft and set it to Published	You
5. Keep in line	Every later sync updates costs, stock, variants and untouched text	The schedule: syncing

Nothing reaches a storefront by itself. A new product in a feed stays on Supplier products until someone adds it, and it stays a draft until someone publishes it.

Supplier products: the staging area

Suppliers > Supplier products lists what suppliers offer, whether or not you sell it. It is separate from the catalog: nothing here is on a site, and a sync can freely change it. Each row has a status:

Status	Meaning	Set by
New	In the feed and not in the catalog: waiting for a decision	The sync
In catalog	Added to the catalog; syncs keep the catalog product up to date	Add to catalog
Ignored	Never to be added. Stays ignored through every sync until you undo it	You
No longer supplied	Gone from the feed. A catalog product made from it is kept	The sync

A code that comes back to the feed returns to New or In catalog.

The menu

Screen	What it is for
Suppliers > Suppliers	The companies you buy from: details, contacts and purchase orders. A supplier has one feed at most; one with none has its products added by hand
Suppliers > Supplier products	Every feed’s products, for browsing and adding
Suppliers > Feeds	One row per feed. Open one for its Settings, Products, Categories, Methods, Positions and Sync history
Suppliers > Sync history	Every feed’s sync runs, newest first
Suppliers > Decoration sheets	Branding price lists kept here rather than read from a feed: branding setup
Configuration > Catalog	Text rules and protected words, photo rules and photo download rules, split rules
Configuration > Decoration	Decoration methods and branding rules

Which feeds exist

Feed	Stock in the feed
Mid Ocean	Yes
The Umbrella Company	No
XD Connects	Yes
Laltex	No
PF Concept	No
PenCarrie	Yes
Ralawise	No
Uneek	Yes

Feeds are set up in code, so a new supplier feed is a job for a developer. See supplier feeds. Each feed’s settings page has a section How this feed is adjusted, which lists what Smooth does for that supplier alone and why: fixes to its data, and business rules for it. These can only be changed in code.

One supplier per product

A catalog product has one supplier. The order of rows on Suppliers > Feeds decides which supplier to use when two sell the same item: the first wins. Drag rows to change it. See duplicates.