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The 'unknown' vendor

How brands and vendors can create an unknown vendor for Shopify users

Monica avatar
Written by Monica
Updated over a week ago

Inventory Planner syncs product information from its connected platforms. However, not all platforms associate variants with suppliers (vendors). If that information can't be synced, the variants will be assigned an 'unknown' vendor, and you'll need to set vendors up within your Inventory Planner account.

You cannot rename the 'unknown' vendor. Instead, you will need to assign your products to vendors in Inventory Planner.

Brands and vendors

In Inventory Planner, the brand is the name the product is sold under on your site, and vendor is the distributor with whom you place orders. For example, a brand might be Nike while a vendor is Running Shoe Distributors.

Vendors in Shopify are mapped to brands in Inventory Planner, as Shopify defines vendors as the name a product is sold under (as opposed to the supplier).

This means that when a product is created in Shopify, it will not be assigned to a vendor by default. When you have variants without an assigned vendor, you'll see the 'unknown' vendor.

Assigning your products to vendors

There are a few things you can do to assign your products to vendors:

Each brand is sold by a single vendor

If each of your brands is sold by a single vendor, you can associate the brands to their vendors to automatically assign the variants to vendors too.

When a variant downloads from Shopify, Inventory Planner will automatically assign a brand, and if that brand is linked to a vendor, it will also assign the variant to the same vendor.

Your brands are also your vendors

If you are in a situation where your Shopify vendors do correspond to your suppliers, you can configure your Shopify connection to import your Shopify Vendors as suppliers.

To do so, go to Account > Connections and warehouses and click the gear next to your Shopify connection.

There, enable "Sync suppliers from Shopify vendors" and click "Save".

Manually assign vendors to your variants

If neither of the above options suit your workflow, you will need to create the vendors in Inventory Planner and assign them to your products.

Answers the questions

Why do I see an 'unknown' vendor?

Why can't I change the name of the 'unknown' vendor?

What is the difference between Brand and Vendor?

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