Product and customer sync
How sync works
Once your platform is connected (see Managing integrations), SparkLayer keeps two feeds from your store:
- Product sync tells SparkLayer which products and variants exist, so it knows which B2B prices to show when a signed-in B2B customer views a product.
- Customer sync tells SparkLayer who your B2B customers are, so it recognises them when they sign in and shows them the right B2B pricing and rules.
Your store
Sync
Price lists and customer groups
Storefront
Each feed has a full sync, which copies everything, and partial syncs, which copy what's changed since. SparkLayer syncs every product in your store by default. A product can't be bought by B2B customers until it has a price: see Pricing.
Check your products are syncing
Go to Integrations,Product sync (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab). When everything is working, the banner at the top reads Products are up to date. It shows how many products synced from Shopify, and the times of the last full and partial sync.
SparkLayer refreshes products every 10 minutes. To catch up sooner after you change products, click Sync products now. It usually takes a few minutes.
Look up a product's data
Product data lookup shows what SparkLayer has for a product, to diagnose a price or stock question.
- Go to Integrations,Product sync (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab).
- In Product data lookup, search by name, SKU, barcode or ID.
- Check the results. Each shows the Product, its SKU, its Retail price and whether it's Up to date.
| Search by | Example or where to find it |
|---|---|
| SKU | The stock keeping unit of a variant. A product with three variants might have the SKUs ABC-1, ABC-2 and ABC-3. |
| ID | The product's ID on your platform. On Shopify, open the product in the admin: the ID is the number at the end of the URL. In https://your-shopify-store-url.com/admin/products/7356521840875 the ID is 7356521840875. |
| Name | All or part of the product name. |
| Barcode | The barcode, if the product has one. |
If nothing comes back, it says No products found: try the SKU, or a different name. If a product still isn't there, see Troubleshooting.
Stock states
SparkLayer also holds each variant's stock.
| Stock state | What it means |
|---|---|
| Stock data found | Stock information exists for this variant, for each location. |
| Stock data not found | SparkLayer has no stock data for this variant. Variants without stock data can't be bought. |
| Stock not being tracked | Inventory tracking is turned off for this variant on your platform, so there's no stock information. The variant can still be bought. |
Check your customers are syncing
SparkLayer imports only customers tagged b2b, or customers your developer has sent with metafields in the sparklayer namespace. That way, you control which customers are imported. On Shopify, see Assign customers to a customer group and Shopify metafields.
To check a customer has synced, find them in Customers (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) and open them. Their page shows what SparkLayer holds: their details, customer group, company and addresses. See Find and manage customers.
Fix customer sync errors
When some customers didn't sync, Customers (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) shows a banner such as Customers sync completed with 3 errors, with the times of the last full and partial sync.
- Click Show errors. Customer sync errors lists each customer's name, email and the problem, such as "Missing a default shipping address".
- Click Open customers in Shopify and fix each customer there.
- Wait for the next partial sync. Fixed customers sync then.
From your first week, Home's briefing also tells you when customers didn't sync, with Show errors. Common errors and fixes are in Troubleshooting.
If a customer or their address won't sync, these are the 2 most common causes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| An incomplete address, often a secondary (second) address in the customer's address book | Complete the address in Shopify, with a country, first line, city and postcode or ZIP code, or delete it. Every address must be complete, not only the default one. |
| The sales agent groups metafield isn't limited to preset choices (Shopify) | Turn on Limit to preset choices on the metafield's definition, with each sales agent group as a choice. See Set up the sales agent groups metafield. |
Re-running the customer sync
You don't need to start a customer sync yourself: it runs automatically. If you think it's stuck, contact support. Our team can run Sync customers now for you from SparkLayer's staff-only tools.
Troubleshooting
For product sync, check the products have a SKU on every variant and are Active. For customer sync, click Show errors on Customers (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab). For common causes and fixes, see Troubleshooting. If you can't resolve it, contact support.
Look the product up in Product data lookup. Also check the product has a price in one of the customer's price lists.
Find them in Customers (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab). If they aren't there, check they're tagged b2b on your platform (or, if your developer set them up that way, have sparklayer metafields), then check Show errors for a sync problem.
Products refresh every 10 minutes. To update them sooner, click Sync products now in Integrations,Product sync (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab).
Last updated