07. Import products from Shopify

Importing products is the first, one-off step that brings your existing Shopify catalog into Qoblex. It reads your Shopify products and their variants, then creates or links matching products in your Qoblex catalog. You run it once per store, right after you connect the store and choose your sync settings.

This article explains where to start the import, what Qoblex brings across, how the import runs in the background, and what happens while it is running (including why live Shopify updates pause during an import). After reading it you will know how to prepare for a clean import, start it from either the Shopify settings page or the Products page, and how to tell when it has finished.

Before you import

The import uses the settings you have already saved for the store, so get those right first. Prices, inventory quantities, and locations all follow your saved mapping and sync choices, and matching depends on your product matching strategy. Fixing settings after the catalog is in Qoblex is far more work than getting them right up front.

Work through this quick checklist before you start:

• Finish your settings first. Choose your sync directions, product matching strategy, and product fields on the Shopify settings page. See Connect Shopify and choose your sync settings.
• Validate locations, currency, and price lists. Map your Shopify locations to Qoblex locations, set your store currency and exchange rate, and pick your price and compare-at price lists. See Shopify locations, currency, and price lists.
• Pick a quiet import window. The import may run for several minutes on a large catalog, and while it runs Qoblex holds live updates from Shopify for that store (see below). Start it when the store is not in the middle of a busy trading period.
• Plan to spot-check afterwards. After the import completes, open a handful of imported products in Qoblex and compare their SKUs, barcodes, options, images, prices, and per-location stock against Shopify.

The import connects to Shopify with the permissions granted when you installed the app. If the settings page shows the “Update your integration to grant Qoblex the necessary permissions for seamless store management.” banner, click Update and re-grant access before importing.

Where to start the import

You can launch the same product import from two places. Both send the same request and run the same background job.

From the Shopify settings page

When you have just connected a store and are finishing its setup, the settings page shows a Finish Setting Up Your store button. This is the normal path for a first import.

1. Go to Integrations and open your Shopify store’s settings.
2. Confirm your sync, location, currency, and price-list settings are correct.
3. Click Finish Setting Up Your store. Qoblex saves your settings, then opens the Import products window.
4. In the window, click Import Products.

The Import products window explains what to expect:

To finish your store setup, we need to import your products. This might take a few minutes depending on the number of products to import. We will send you an email when the import operation is complete.

While the import is queued and running, the window shows a busy state. When it finishes, the button changes to Done. Clicking Done takes you to your Activity feed and refreshes the app.

From the Products page

You can also start a Shopify import from the product import wizard.

1. Go to Inventory > Products and open the Import products wizard.
2. Choose the Shopify importer.
3. Under “Which store do you want us to import your products from?”, select the store you want to import from.
4. Click Import my products.

The wizard confirms: “Select a Shopify store from where you would like to import your products. The import operation might take some time depending on the number of products you have on your store”

Do not start the import again before the completion email arrives. A product import runs as a background job and can span several minutes and multiple pages of your catalog. Starting a second import for the same store while one is still running can collide with the first. Wait for the email (or for the window to show Done) before you re-run.

What Qoblex imports

During a Shopify product import, Qoblex reads your catalog page by page and brings across, for each product:

• The product and its variants.
• SKUs and barcodes.
• Product options.
• Product images.
• Inventory items, with their per-location inventory quantities across your Shopify locations.
• Product prices and compare-at prices.

Qoblex then creates new products in your catalog or updates matching ones, and records the link between each Shopify product and variant and its Qoblex counterpart, so that ongoing sync knows which records belong together. How a Shopify product is matched to an existing Qoblex product (by name, SKU, or barcode) is controlled by your matching strategy, covered in Connect Shopify and choose your sync settings.

Very large products are handled with limits. A product with 250 or more images is skipped rather than imported, and a variant whose stock spans more than 250 Shopify locations has its remaining locations loaded in additional pages. A product that has no variants in Shopify cannot be processed and is left out.

The prices, quantities, and locations that land in Qoblex follow the price lists, currency, and location mapping you saved for the store. If those settings were not correct when you imported, the imported values will reflect the wrong settings, which is why the checklist above matters.

While the import runs: live updates are held

Product import runs in the background and can take a while on a large catalog. To stop a live change in Shopify from colliding with the catalog Qoblex is still building, Qoblex pauses live updates for that store for the duration of the import.

While a product import is in progress for a store, Qoblex defers the store’s live Shopify updates (product and order updates) instead of processing them, and retries them shortly after. Those live updates are not lost: they resume automatically once the import finishes. This is why you should import during a quiet window and avoid making large catalog edits in Shopify until the import completes.

Internally, Qoblex keeps a busy flag set on the store while the import is running and clears it when the import finishes. If the import fails partway through, Qoblex clears the busy flag so live updates resume.

When the import finishes

When the last page of your catalog has been imported, Qoblex:

• Emails the person who started the import. The email confirms the import is complete and includes the total number of products imported and a link back to your store. It is sent to the email address of the user who launched the import, so make sure that user account has a valid email.
• Queues an import of your currently open Shopify orders. Qoblex automatically starts an import of the store’s open orders so that orders which depend on the products and variants you just imported can be brought in. This is not a full historical order import. To bring in older orders or a specific date range, run a manual order import. See How Shopify order sync and order editing work and Import historical Shopify orders.
• Resumes live updates. The busy flag is cleared, so live Shopify updates for the store are processed again from that point on.

If the import window shows Done but your products are not visible yet, or if you want to review what happened, open your Activity feed for the import result and any warnings.

Troubleshooting