Products

Create and manage the items you sell: title, SKU, identifiers, pricing, stock, images.

A product is a single item in your catalog. This page covers the fields you fill in and the habits that keep your data clean enough to sync to every channel.

Creating a product

  1. Open the catalog. Go to Catalog → Products and click Add Product.
  2. Enter the basics. Only Title is required. Fill in SKU, status, identifiers and pricing as you have them, then click Create Product.
  3. Finish on the product page. You land on the new product, where tabs such as Images, Attributes, Shipping and Channels hold the rest.
  4. Set the status to Active. New products start as Draft. Only Active products can be listed on channels, so change Status to Active when the product is ready, then save.

ℹ️ Note: Setting a product to Draft or Archived takes it out of the pool that channels can list from. If it is already assigned to a channel, ILLUMA may ask you to confirm first, depending on how that channel is set to handle archived products.

Field reference

Field Required Notes
Title Yes The product name shoppers see.
SKU See note Your internal identifier. On the create form you can leave it blank and ILLUMA fills in the next number from your product number series. The edit page expects a SKU to be present.
Status No Draft (default), Active or Archived.
Condition No New, Used or Refurbished.
Manufacturer Part # (MPN) No The maker’s own part number. Used, together with the brand, when matching vendor files to your products (see below).
GTIN / UPC / EAN No The barcode number. Vendor files and marketplaces use it to match an item to your product.
Price No The base price. A channel listing can use a different price.
Compare Price, Cost Price, MAP Price No Strike-through price, what you pay, and the minimum advertised price.
Product Type No Simple, Configurable (has variants), Bundle, Virtual (no shipping) or Downloadable.
Brand No Links to a brand.
Categories No Links to categories.
Attributes No Structured properties. See Attributes.
Images No Added on the Images tab. Most channels require at least one image.

📸 Screenshot placeholder: The Add Product form (Catalog → Products → Add Product) showing the Basic Information, Identifiers and Pricing sections, using a test product.

Identifiers and matching

Your SKU is yours. It does not have to look like anything in particular, and it does not have to match a vendor’s number. When a vendor’s catalog file is matched to your products, ILLUMA uses whichever identifier you choose for that feed:

  • UPC / barcode (the default).
  • Manufacturer part # plus brand, because the same part number can appear under different brands.
  • UPC first, then manufacturer part # plus brand.
  • Vendor’s part # is our SKU, only if you already number your catalog the way the vendor does.
  • Manufacturer part # alone, which finds several products for many items and sends them to review, so use it with care.

A match that finds more than one product is never decided for you. It goes to the review queue. See Product Feeds. Keep MPN, GTIN and Brand filled in on your products and matching works far better.

Stock on hand

There is no single quantity box on the product. Stock is counted per location, and optionally per bin within a location. To change it, go to Inventory → Stock Levels and use Adjust Stock on the product’s row. You can Add, Remove or Set To a quantity, with a reason.

  • Track Inventory (on the product’s General tab) controls whether ILLUMA counts stock for the product at all.
  • Allow Backorders lets the product keep selling at zero.
  • The same bin code can exist at more than one location. Each one is a separate slot with its own count.

ℹ️ Note: Inventory is a plan feature. If you do not see it in your sidebar, it is not turned on for your account.

Keep vendor feeds from overwriting your edits

On the General tab, Protect from vendor updates lets you lock a product’s title, price and MAP, description, MPN / GTIN / weight, images or categories. A locked aspect can still be filled in by a vendor feed when it is blank, but it is never overwritten.

SKUs done right

⚠️ Warning: Do not reuse or change a SKU once it is tied to a channel listing or has order history. ILLUMA does not stop you from typing a SKU that is already used by another product, so check before you save. Retire discontinued products (set them to Archived) instead of recycling their SKUs.

  • Use a consistent pattern (for example BRAND-MODEL-VARIANT), or let the number series assign them. Both work.
  • Keep SKUs readable so they are easy to scan on a packing slip.
  • One SKU is one physical item. Use variants for size and color.
  • If you sell a vendor’s product, keep your SKU and the vendor’s part number separate. The vendor’s number is stored on the link between the vendor and your product, so your SKU never has to match it.

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