6. Catalogue and SKUs

Records, then Inventory. This is your blanks: what you sell, in what colours and sizes, and how many you have.

The four layers, again

Brand   Gildan
  Style     5000 Heavy Cotton Tee
    Colourway  Black
      Size       L
      = SKU    GIL-5000-BLK-L

Stock, cost and reorder settings all live on the SKU. Everything above the SKU exists so a style with 12 colours and 6 sizes is describable without typing 72 rows by hand.

Three ways to get garments in

1. Sync a supplier catalogue (fastest)

If you buy from AS Colour, SanMar or Ralawise, connect the account in Integrations and sync. Brands, styles, colourways, sizes and SKUs are created for you, with supplier cost and supplier stock where the feed provides them.

The sync is safe to re-run: it updates rather than duplicates. Re-run it when your supplier adds a range or changes prices.

Live sync needs the right plan

On the Free tier catalogue syncs run in stub mode and create a small sample rather than your supplier's real range. See plans and limits.

2. Import a CSV

For any supplier without a direct integration. Export their range from their trade portal, map the columns, import. This is the normal path for a shop that buys from three or four wholesalers.

3. Add by hand

Fine for the handful of specials you stock yourself: a particular cap, a tote, a branded blank you buy in bulk.

Most shops end up with a mix: one synced supplier for the bulk of the range, a CSV for the second supplier, and a few hand-built SKUs.

The SKU fields

Field	Meaning
Code	The SKU identifier. Generated from brand, style, colour and size when created through a sync
Style	Which garment
Colour	Which colourway. Its hex value drives mockup rendering
Size	Which size
On hand	Physical stock. Read-only in the form on purpose: use Adjust stock from the list so the movement is recorded
Reserved	Committed to orders not yet dispatched
Reorder point	When on-hand falls to this, the SKU is flagged as needing a purchase order
Reorder quantity	How many to order when it is flagged
Is active	Off hides it from new quotes and storefronts

Never edit on-hand to correct a count

Use the Adjust stock action on the list, which asks for an adjustment (positive adds, negative removes) and a reason, and writes a row to the append-only movement ledger. That ledger is what makes on-hand explainable later. For a full recount, use a cycle count instead.

Setting reorder points that work

The reorder point is what turns your stock list into a purchasing system, and a sensible first pass is:

reorder point    = average weekly usage x lead time in weeks x 1.5
reorder quantity = average weekly usage x 6 to 8 weeks

So a black L tee that moves 40 a week from a supplier with a one-week lead time gets a reorder point around 60 and a reorder quantity around 250.

You do not need to do this for every SKU on day one. Do it for the twenty SKUs that are most of your volume, leave the rest at whatever the sync set, and refine as the inventory forecast starts telling you which ones you keep running out of.

Categories

Categories (tees, hoodies, caps) group styles for the storefront and the portal catalogue. They only matter if you are selling online, but they cost nothing to set now and are annoying to backfill across a whole range later.

Useful list actions

Action	What it does
Adjust stock	Change a count with a reason, writing to the ledger
Print labels	Printable shelf labels for the selected SKUs, with barcodes
Low stock only filter	Everything at or under its reorder point

The Print labels bulk action opens a printable sheet at /workspace/skus/labels. Barcoded shelf labels make the cycle count and receiving processes much faster, and they are worth doing once for your main racking.

Next

7. Suppliers and purchasing