Shopify - Create Collections

Shopify does not use a traditional nested menu structure, instead it relies on a concept called Collections which can be arranged into menus.

Products are grouped into Collections either manually, or Automatically by product criteria that you can configure within Shopify.  Criteria can be based on a variety of fields: type, vendor, tags, inventory, etc. Shopify then automatically adds any Products that meet the criteria to that Collection. This makes Automated Collections both flexible and very simple to manage.

Learn more about Collections in the Shopify Online Manual.

IMPORTANT: Collection Names created via the API do not support special characters like &, *, /, -, etc. They will be stripped from the Collection Name or cause an error in Shopify.

Create Collections

Accumula can create certain types of automated Collections based on your POS data for you. You can control this feature in by navigating to Apps > Shopify > Collections in your Accumula settings.

Note: Some older plans didn't include access to Collections.  If you're having trouble enabling this feature please contact our support team.

This feature will Create Collections in Shopify with product criteria either equaling the Shopify Product Type or Vendor. Shopify automatically adds matching Products to the Collection. The default mapping for Product Type or Vendor according to POS solution is found below.

NOTE: Whether products are web enabled has no impact on whether the integration will sync a Product Type or Product Vendor smart collection.  You should assume that every "Vendor" (typically brand) will created an associated smart collection in Shopify.

When Create Collections is on, collections created by Accumula will be updated on each sync. Any manual adjustments made to the collection criteria will be overwritten on update. Once Collections have been created in Shopify we recommend turning Create Collections off. You can then edit your collections as desired.

Common changes to collection criteria are to only include Product Types that contain rather than equal a value, or to only include Products that have Inventory in stock.  For instance, if a product Type was Mens - Jackets - Wool, editing the criteria of Product Type to contain Jackets would give you all types of products that have the word Jackets in the Product Type. Learn more here.

NOTE: Accumula creates Shopify Product Types from Lightspeed Retail by combining Categories and Sub-Categories. The full category path will be created as the Product Type (ie. Mens - Jackets - Wool, etc). This means the Collection created will reference the lowest level of the category path.

IMPORTANT: Collections do not support special characters like &, *, /, -, etc. They will be stripped from the Collection Name or cause an error in Shopify.

Troubleshooting

Duplicate Collections

Shopify's API will often encounter errors when trying to create a collection that has special characters in the name.  Those errors can cause thousands of duplicate collections to be created as a result.  It is in your best interest to make sure special characters are not included in the Lightspeed data that the collections are created from (Categories, Manufacturer, Class, or Family).

If you have created many duplicate collections in Shopify by accidentally including special characters in the Lightspeed data, please contact the Accumula support team for assistance.

Missing Collections

The integration is designed to only create a specific collection once to avoid creating duplicate collections. If you have deleted collections or if you have difficulty creating collections at all, please contact the Accumula support team.

IMPORTANT: Collections do not support special characters like &, *, /, -, etc. They will be stripped from the Collection Name or cause an error in Shopify.