I have a brick and mortar store and a website and signed up with Network Solutions so that I can keep my website inventory levels accurate. I just did my first product upload and have come across a problem. Each size is importing as an individual product. For instance a top which comes in size small, medium and large is showing up as 3 distinct products. It seems as if I only have two options here:

1. I can post the shirt 3 times on the website, which would be redundant (especially for jeans which come in 7 sizes).

2. I can put just one item (size) on the website and create the size variations on that individual product. However, if I do it this way, inventory levels will not be able to update correctly from my quickbooks pos system. For instance, I can put the size small shirt on the website and create size variations for it so that it can be purchased in any size, however, if I sell the size medium in my brick and mortar store, it will update the inventory level of the size medium shirt which is not being posted on the website, not the size medium I created as a variant for the size small shirt.

Does anyone else have this problem? Am I just missing something? If I can't track inventory correctly I will have to find another solution and I do not want to do that because I have really been impressed with Network Solutions up to this point.

Thanks,
Sara

I also have a brick and mortar store and am experiencing a similar issue.
I am just setting up our web store and we have dog collars which come in various sizes and colors.
I set it up on the Web store with variations. I then did a test order to see if it would get sent to quickbooks and it did. They show up in quickbooks with individual item entries, which is not a big deal. But the sizes are showing up in an attribute field and the colors are showing up in the size field!
I may have to reverse my color and size variables when I set them up in the web store.
I'm not sure if I use these new items and update the inventory levels, whether they will be in sync.
Still experimenting....

Thanks,
John

I had a similar problem and found a workaround which is a bit manual but will allow you to get variations linked to your POS items. Part number and Alternate Lookup can be a key between the items in POS and your storefront. The caveat is that partnumber is not unique on your storefront system (Alternate Lookup is unique in POS) and you must have only one product with the partnumber on your storefront.

Steps to match variants and POS items.
1) Import your products from POS
2) Verify that the products you wish to match are available for Import Ops->QuickBooks -> Import Products. If you do not see your products in this list then they have already been linked with another product on the storefront. If this is the case then you need to remove your storefront product.
3) If your products in POS do not have an Alternate Lookup value defined do so.
4) Create your Product Variations on your storefront using the Alternate Lookup value in POS as the Part Number field of your variation.
5) Repeat steps 1 and 2 above. If you do not see your products in the list at this time then it has been linked.

Thank you for your post, however I am still confused. Perhaps you can clarify? To try to do what you said, I am going to do the following:

I am going to delete all of my inventory from my website and start from scratch. Then I am going to go into Quickbooks POS and make sure that all my products have an ALU. However, each size of each product has to have a unique ALU, so for example, I will define the ALU for product 1234 as 1234-S (for the size small), 1234-M (for the size Medium) and 1234-L for the size Large. Is this right so far??

Then I am going to do an import, correct? This is where I get confused. Now I open each product and put the ALU into the Manuf. Part number field. Do I just use 1234 or do I put 1234-S for the small, and so on?

I must be misenterpreting something because I don't see how that is going to work. Would you mind clarifying? I would greatly appreciate it!

Thank You,
Sara
(IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

Yes to all of this.


This is incorrect. What you are going to do is manually create your products on your storefront. So you will create your T-Shirt product and define your sizes. Then create your product variations and define your partnumbers, example edit your Medium T-Shirt variation nd specifiy 1234-M as the partnumber and enable it You may be able to accomplish this faster with csv import. Finally import your inventory from POS. Importing from POS attempts to match products up. It first tries to match products up using the Name of the product and then using the alternate lookup so you may want to make sure you don't duplicate the product names between your POS and storefront. If you are successful you will not see your products in the QuickBooks import item list as they will automatically be matched up with your storefront products.

I have a brick and mortar store and am using Quickbooks Premier Manufacturing Software as we are also a manufacturer. We purchased Network Solutions at the same time we purchased Quickbooks Pro POS because we were sold the integration capabilities. A very large percent of our products have variations in length, strength, size, color, etc. I tried sending the products from QB Financial to QB POS without success in the variations. I tried uploading the products into the cart and the variations ended up in the description field with out enough information to make it work. So after all this, I deleted it all from the cart and in POS and started over. During this process I contacted Network Solutions on several occasions. Folks were nice enough but kept telling me to wait until Monday when the QB guru would be available. Today is monday and the QB guru is in meetings all day. The support person who I spoke with today recommended that I load everything into the shopping cart first manually added all the variations through edits and putting my part number in the item number field (mind you this would be over 4,000 products). I was told after entering all the items in the cart, I would need to process an order for each item and do a sync where it would then show up in POS as an individual item. The item number would end up in the alternate look up field and the name would end up in the name and a new number would be generated as the item number. I would then need to go into each item in POS and edit its details and financial accounts. I am waiting on more information from Network Solutions but am concerned what my prospects are for completing this in the time frame I need to to start accepting sales with the POS software. From the postings I see here, it sounds like the integration is not really complete yet. Does anyone else have a better solution for this? (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

I am in the same boat as you with one step worse...I can't even get the order to sync/import into Quickbooks. I am wanting to get atleast 1 imported so I can see how it creates it in quickbooks. Then I maybe be able to figure out a way to get them created in QB without having to process an order for each item using import/export of each product. I just need to figure out exactly what the key link field is and what value to use in that field.

It doesn't make much sense that we have to clutter up our financial software with bogus orders that is going to cause headaches in the future when it comes to tax time just to get items setup correctly.

I will keep you all posted on any progress I make.

Danny

I was told that on the first sync of orders, the websync creates a unique identifier in a custom field in POS and once that happens it recognizes the product on that code. To me this makes no sense as it does not recognize what you already have and does not correspond to what you already created. I have accelerated my support ticket and am hopeful someone will respond today. If the news is good, happy to share it. If the news is bad, I will have to rethink my shopping cart decision. Good Luck. (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

This is a situation where I will reply and follow-up from my own reply. After pushing to get additional help from Network Solutions I received a call today which clarifies the possibilities. It does not make it easier regarding input but at a minimum I can define guidelines for how to set up products and move forward. I was told that for products with variations I will have to enter them in both the shopping cart and into point of sale. When they are entered in the shopping cart I need to make sure the item numbers for the variations are the same as the alternate look up in Point of Sale. That will be how they match up. The sync process first compares the name (with variations this would be the first name you set up before you created the variations), if the name is the same, it assumes they are the same product, if they are different, it next compares the item number in shopping cart to the alternate look up in Point of Sale. If they are the same, it determines they are the same. If they are different, it will create a new product if there are sales. So the key to all of this is to create a masterful alternate lookup in Point of Sale and use it for each variation item in shopping cart. Make sure the name is different for each item in point of sale. With this information, I will be developing a name in Point of Sale which is helpful regarding the variation in the product. There will end up being duplication of information as the attribute and size will be needed for reordering purposes in addition to the creative name. Good Luck. If anyone from Network Solutions reads this, please verify I wrote it correctly. I will let you know if my tests work on this. (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

The test of the integration as shown above was completely unsuccessful. The integration created all new products for items that were created exactly as recommended with different descriptions and same alternate lookup fields. I called support and they assisted me through the order processing steps and we processed the sync with Quickbooks. When the results came out wrong I was told I need to talk to either Stephen who I have never been able to contact at Network Solutions or try Intuit who could not help me before. What do I do now??? (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

I tried an experiment creating the same product name in the shopping cart and in Quickbooks Point of Sale, with matching item number and alternate lookup numbers and created orders, and synchronized and that was yet another bust. The products from the shopping cart came in as all new products, duplicating the same products that already exist in Point of Sale. I am very frustrated and have no where to go for help. HELP!!! (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/angry.gif)

I tried yet another experiment with name and item number that failed. Is there a possibility of manually entering the web syn number into QuickBooks inventory items for it think those are the identical items in shopping cart?

I am still waiting for help on this topic from support. They are challenged with product variations. Aren't there tons of customers out there like me variations in size, color, length, etc.? If anyone got new information, please let me know. (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

I started with the new release from the start. After a month of back and forth, this week I was told additional information which I will have to test but it's not great. They reset my websync with Quickbooks and claim it will recognize products so long as it is the item # in shopping cart matched to the alternate look up in Point of Sale but the name in each must be different. The negatives in all of this is you have to hand enter the products in both softwares and the products will not synchronize inventory unless an order is actually placed. I had expected to be able to start my cart with my brick and mortar inventory with a synchronization but that is not possible unless I were to place a false order for all the products at once which would be a lengthy and wasteful process at best. I am not satisfied with this because it is not true integration. I believe I am at my wits end. Sorry to bear bad news. (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

Variations create separate products with different unique products and inventory counts based on the possible combinations. Personalizations all go in as one product and one inventory count. You can still change the price with the surcharge box.

Yes I am having the exact same issues with the product variations and the synching up. And now since I can't export my orders that means I can't use the Merchant Services - so now I'll have to enter everything manually into QB (I have Enterprise which does not even have the alternate lookup). I agree the shopping cart has many useful features and I have about a month of time (in b/w working) and 2 Saturdays - invested keying everything in - only to find out I'll have to keep doing things manuallly. So just curious how you're handling it. Thanks!

NDelekta, did you ever get your products to synch? I am having the exact same problem (but with a different version of QuickBooks.)