Shopify Product Information Master - PIM

You can do that with Airtable’s CSV Import extension, which allows you to import or update records from a CSV file, based on whether a CSV record matches an existing Airtable record.

Note that the CSV import extension has the following limitations:

• The extension cannot be triggered automatically. You have to manually trigger the import.
• You must have access to the “Data” layer to use the extension.
• Your CSV file has to be 25,000 rows or less.
• Your CSV file must be 5 MB or less.

To workaround these limitations, you can completely automate the entire process by using Make’s CSV modules along with Make’s Airtable modules.

I demonstrate step-by-step how to automatically import & merge CSV files into Airtable on this Airtable podcast episode. If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

Hope this helps!

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

If you want to go no-code you could create an automation:

1. Create an empty table to load CSV of UPCs into (you can do this quickly by loading a 1-row CSV and then deleting that one row from the table)
2. Create an automation on that UPC table that does the following:
   1. When a record in the UPC table is created:
   2. “Find records” in your product table with matching UPC
   3. If no records found, use “Create record” to add a record with that UPC to your product table 
   4. If records ARE found then loop through the resultset from the “Find records” step, updating each of your product table’s records with the new values from the UPC table
3. Now load your CSV into that UPC table 

Natalka

Hm, so you currently have one base and one CSV per supplier, is that right?

If so, I think for each supplier I’d try:

1. Import the CSV as a new table in the Supplier’s base, call this ‘Imported’
2. Create a new formula field in ‘Imported’ and make it display the UPC value
3. Set the primary field of the ‘Imported’ table to be the field from step 2
4. In the actual data table
   1. Create a linked field to ‘Imported’
   2. In a view where all the records are displayed click the field header for the UPC field
      1. This will select the entire column
   3. Hit CTRL/CMD+C
   4. In a view where all the records are displayed, click the field header for the linked field to ‘Imported’
   5. Hit CTRL/CMD+V
      1. This will link the records to the Imported table
      2. Because the primary field of Imported is a formula field, it won’t create any new records in Imported

All the records that have links to the ‘Imported’ table are the ones that we now have to update, and we’d make an automation to handle this

All the records that do not have links to the ‘Imported’ table are the ones that we now have to push to Shopify, and once that’s done we’d trigger the same automation from above to update the records

There are a couple of options on how to push to Shopify, and the two that you can look at are:

1. Using Make.com
   1. I’ve had some issues with metafield updates with this so you may want to double check this bit to make sure it works for you?  
   2. Would cost money per product / variant update, still pretty cheap though
2. Using AirPower
   1. I’ve had some issues with this and custom data fields + variant position
   2. Monthly cost, unlimited syncs

I ended up doing a mixture of both to cover the limitations they each had heh

I do free half hour calls and so if you’d like to brainstorm feel free to schedule a call here!

Thank you all for the great sugestions, as I will review them all to see what I feel most comfortable with, assuming my brain with a little help!

Thank you again for your help! as I may need to lean on you again...