How to Clean Up Your Seller Center SKUs

Your SKU is how OneCart knows that a listing on Shopee, a listing on Lazada and a product on Shopify are the same item on your shelf. When the SKUs in your seller centers are blank, inconsistent or duplicated, OneCart cannot connect your listings to your stock, and everything built on top of that connection suffers.

This guide explains why clean SKUs matter and walks you through the clean-up: export your product list from each seller center, clean it up in a spreadsheet, then import it back.

Why clean SKUs matter

Linking your listings. OneCart matches each platform listing to a SKU in your OneCart inventory. If you use the same SKU for the same item on every platform, OneCart suggests the match for you and linking is quick. If the SKU is blank, different between platforms, or missing from OneCart, the listing cannot be auto-matched. See Why are the SKUs not able to be auto-matched? and Matching your Platform Listings in OneCart.

Inventory sync. Only linked listings get their stock synced. An unlinked listing keeps whatever quantity the seller center last had, which is how overselling happens.

Reports. Your sales and analytics reports only show the full picture when all your listings are linked to the right SKUs.

Building your item master. Create from Shops creates each SKU once from your shops’ listings. The same SKU on several shops becomes one product, and listings without a SKU are skipped.

Packing. Scan to pack recognises an item by its barcode or its SKU, so a clear SKU on every item means fewer surprises at the packing table.

What a clean SKU list looks like

• Every variant has a SKU. No blank SKU cells, including each size and colour of a product.
• One item, one SKU, on every platform. The same red T-shirt in size M should carry the same SKU on Shopee, Lazada, Shopify and in OneCart.
• No two different items share a SKU. OneCart treats MUG-WHI and mug-whi as the same SKU, so don’t rely on upper and lower case to tell items apart.
• Keep + for bundles. A SKU such as MUG-WHI+TOWEL-NAT is read as a bundle of MUG-WHI and TOWEL-NAT.
• Keep long numbers and leading zeros intact. Spreadsheets can turn a SKU like 00123 into 123, or a long number into 1.23E+10. See how to remove scientific notation before you save your file.

Need a SKU naming scheme? Our Free AI SKU Generator creates consistent SKUs from your product names.

How to clean up your SKUs

Step 1: Export your product list

Export the product list from each seller center you sell on. The export gives you a spreadsheet with every listing and its current SKU. Use the platform guides below.

Step 2: Clean up the file

Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets and go through the SKU column:

1. Fill in every blank SKU.
2. Change any SKU that differs from the one you use for the same item on your other platforms and in OneCart.
3. Give a new SKU to any item that shares a SKU with a different item.
4. Save the file in the format the seller center gave you, without changing the other columns.

Step 3: Import the file back

Upload the cleaned file to the same seller center. Shopee and Lazada show you which rows failed and why, so you can fix those rows and upload them again.

Step 4: Refresh and match in OneCart

Once the seller center has your new SKUs, refresh your listings in OneCart so it picks up the changes, then match any listings that are still unlinked. See Bulk Refresh & Match Listings in OneCart. If a SKU on your listings is not in your OneCart inventory yet, the Missing SKUs report lists them for you.

Platform guides

Want us to help?

Cleaning up SKUs across several stores and hundreds of products takes time, and it is easy to miss a row. Email us at hello@getonecart.com with the stores you sell on, and we will look at your SKUs, show you what needs fixing, and help you get it done.