Getting your catalogue in
How to move an existing product catalogue into Serat: required fields, AI-assisted column mapping, barcodes, opening stock and the recommended order of work.
Every implementation stands or falls on this step. The good news is that the requirements are small; the work is in deciding how your styles are actually structured.
The minimum Serat needs
For each variant you intend to sell or count:
A style identifier. Whatever you call the product itself, consistently.
A colour and a size. Two separate values, not one combined string, if you can help it.
A barcode. Existing EAN codes are best. Serat can generate and print codes for variants that do not have one.
A price. Retail, wholesale, or both. Cost is optional but unlocks margin reporting.
Brand, material, season and free-form tags are optional and worth filling in, because they are what bulk price changes and reporting filters use later.
Assisted import
Import takes a spreadsheet. Rather than asking you to rename your columns to match ours, Serat reads your header row and proposes a mapping: this column looks like a colour, that one looks like a wholesale price. You confirm or correct each suggestion before anything is written, and the file is validated as a whole so a bad row does not leave you with a half-imported catalogue.
Keep the first import small. One brand or one season is enough to see whether your structure survives the round trip.
Opening stock
Stock is imported per variant per location. If your current numbers are not trustworthy, the honest path is to import the catalogue first, then run a barcode stocktake at each location and let the count set the opening quantity. It costs an evening and buys you a stock ledger you can defend.
Recommended order
Agree the variant structure: what is a style, what is a colourway, what is a size run.
Import one brand or season and check a few variants by hand.
Print labels for anything without a usable barcode.
Import or count opening stock per location.
Connect one sales channel and watch a single order flow end to end.
Add the remaining channels, then the wholesale portal if you use one.
Things worth deciding before you import
Whether a colour change makes a new style or a new colourway of the same style.
Whether your storeroom is a location that holds sellable stock, or a place stock passes through.
Who is allowed to change prices, and whether that is done per variant or by rule.
Which channel is the source of truth for a product description when both you and a marketplace have one.