Inventory Planner downloads vendor-catalog associations from most inventory management systems. For ecommerce systems which don't store vendor-catalog information, you must create vendors then update their catalog associations directly in Inventory Planner.

Until the associations are made, all variants will be assigned to an "unknown" vendor by default.

There are several ways to associate variants and vendors:

You can also associate multiple vendors to a single variant.

You can associate a single SKU with more than one vendor, which is useful if you can purchase a product from more than one source.

Associating a SKU with all vendors it can be purchased from lets you apply attributes that are specific to those individual vendors, such as titles, vendor SKUs, cost prices, units of measurement, minimum order quantities and bulk discounts.

You can use the Catalog to assign multiple variants with a single vendor.

To do so, navigate to Catalog > Vendors, then click "x variants" beneath the vendor you'd like to associate with multiple products.

Click "+ Variant to vendor" at the bottom of the page.

Search for and select variants to associate with the vendor by selecting checkboxes on the left-hand side of the page.

Once you've selected the variants you want to associate with the vendor, click "Apply".

You can associate additional vendors with a variant by going to Catalog > Vendor attributes. In the "Variant actions" column, press the "+" to add another vendor.

Search for and select the appropriate vendor, input any additional information, and save changes.

You can also associate all variants of a brand with a particular vendor. To do so, go to Catalog > Vendors and click "Settings" beneath the vendor you'd like to set the association up for.

On the vendor's settings page, scroll to the "Associated brands" section. Click "+Add brand" to associate all products belonging to that brand with the vendor. Choose the brand from the dropdown list and click "Add brand", then save your changes.

Note that adding a brand automatically links all current and future products belonging to that brand with the vendor.

You can disassociate a brand by clicking the trash can icon beside the brand. Removing the brand will unlink all current products belonging to that brand with the vendor.

You can import vendor associations by importing vendor attributes. Learn more about the process here.

Import vendor associations by filling in a vendor and a SKU on each row.

If you wish to associate the same SKU with multiple vendors, include the vendors on separate rows with the same SKU.

When you map the columns, make sure "Remove all other vendors" is disabled.

If a vendor has been assigned in Inventory Planner, you can reassign it by going to Catalog > Vendors, then clicking on "x variants" beneath the vendor's name.

From there, in the "Action" column, you will see an icon beside any variant that was manually assigned.

Click on the icon to reassign the variant to a different vendor.

If the variant was assigned to the vendor outside of Inventory Planner, you must reassign it in the connected platform.

Shopify's vendors differ from Inventory Planner's vendors. Please see this article for more information.