NetSuite Connector and Alias SKUs

We recently had a customer that came to us after using a highly reputable consulting firm to implement their NetSuite and NetSuite Connector instances. Their concern? The consultant could not fully set up their inventory and price sync for their Amazon NetSuite Connector. After investigating this issue, we think we know why the consultant couldn't get to the goal line for this customer, and it’s 100% not their fault. Here’s why.

This customer utilizes NetSuite Connector to connect NetSuite to Amazon and has alias SKUs for their Amazon marketplace, not an uncommon practice. As outlined by NetSuite, there are two methods to handle this: kit item method and custom record method. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and this customer chose the custom record method.

This worked fine for orders and fulfillments where the consultant had the setup working perfectly with alias SKUs. On the other hand, they could not get inventory and price to sync. This synchronization is crucial to avoid overselling due to incorrect quantities on listings. Getting this to work requires fairly simple settings in NetSuite Connector to check and pull the appropriate alias data from the custom records in NetSuite, and sync those along with inventory and price to their various carts and marketplaces.

And there’s no way to turn it on.

Well, not exactly. But, without a NetSuite Connector expert it seems reasonable the consulting firm didn’t have the appropriate tools or knowledge to turn it on. We suspect they contacted support to no avail and that’s when the consultant had to step away. Perhaps the “deep dark secrets” held in Advanced Customer Support could work this out, but of course for a large fee and perhaps a month of back-and-forth communication. Even then, we’re not confident this customer would have walked away with a good result. 

Fortunately for them, we are the NetSuite Connector experts and we do know how to enable this feature. We were really excited to be able to have this resolved in a couple of days. We set up the configuration, ran testing, and then worked on a gradual deployment one afternoon with the customer to ensure accuracy and full integration. Our team walked them through every step of the go-live process until all products were properly synced with Amazon, aliases and original items alike.

Our hope is that we can provide a faster and more cost-effective outcome for customers in similar situations. It’s one of the myriad of issues that can arise with NetSuite Connector where there are no clean and simple solutions you can work out with documentation or support. So, if you’ve been banging your head on the wall trying to solve a problem with NetSuite Connector, it’s possible that you’re not going to figure it out without the support of an expert team that knows the product.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, please hit the "Get Started" button above and we'll reach out to you quickly to see how we can help.