What This Feature Does
Product Management is where you create and maintain your product catalogue in ItSynx and publish it to your connected systems (currently NetSuite, with Shopify pricing sync also available). Instead of creating a product in NetSuite and manually re-entering it elsewhere, you build it once in ItSynx—including all variants, pricing, and custom attributes—and publish it when it’s ready.
This guide covers:
- Understanding how a product and its variants fit together (the product hierarchy)
- Creating a new product, with or without variants
- Filling in attributes, photos, and pricing
- Publishing a product, and what happens when it’s queued
- Keeping a published product up to date
- UPCs — how they’re assigned, and what to do if you’re running low
- Deleting products
- Bulk publishing many products at once
- Monitoring the health of your catalogue
- Seeing who requested a product change
Before You Start
Your NetSuite account, and your Shopify stores if you push prices to Shopify, need to be connected to ItSynx first. See the Getting Started guide.
Understanding the Product Hierarchy
Not every product has variants. ItSynx supports two kinds:
Non-Matrix Products
A standalone product with no variants — one code, one listing. What you see is what gets published.
Matrix Products (Style → Colourway → Product)
A matrix product is a style that comes in multiple variants — think a T-shirt that comes in Black and White, each in Small, Medium, and Large. ItSynx organises this as three levels:
- Style — the top-level product (e.g. “Classic Tee”). This is what you create first.
- Colourway — one variant of the style’s first defining attribute (e.g. “Classic Tee — Black”). Colourways exist in ItSynx to help you organise variants, but they’re never published on their own.
- Product — a specific combination of both defining attributes (e.g. “Classic Tee — Black — Medium”). This is the sellable item, and it’s what actually gets published to NetSuite as a child of the style.
Every matrix product is built from variant-defining attributes — colour and size are the most common pairing, and the one used throughout this guide, but they don’t have to be. Your ItSynx administrator configures which attributes define variants for your catalogue, so depending on your product range this could just as easily be, say, Material and Size, or Colour and Fit. Whatever the attributes are, the same three-level structure applies — the naming (“Colourway”) stays the same in the interface regardless of which attribute is actually driving that level.
You’ll see this hierarchy laid out as an expandable tree wherever products are listed — click the + next to a style to reveal its colourways, and the + next to a colourway to reveal its individual size products.
Creating a Product
Click Create Product from the Products page.
- Code and Display Name are required for every product.
- Fill in whichever attributes apply — required fields are marked with an asterisk. Fields that are inherited from a parent (style or colourway) show an inheritance indicator, so you can tell at a glance whether a value is its own or copied down from above, and reset it back to inherited if needed.
- Add a photo using Select A Photo (or Remove Photo to clear it).
- If the product has variants, tick Is Matrix Item and use the Product Variants section:
- Choose a colour… and Choose a size… dropdowns add a value from each of your team’s variant-defining attributes to the style (again, shown here as colour and size, but these could be whichever pair of attributes your catalogue is configured to use). For teams with standard size runs, XXS through to XXL adds a whole size range in one go.
- Each value you’ve added appears with a small × to remove it again.
- The variants table shows every combination as you build it out, so you can see the full matrix at a glance before saving.
- If your team uses vendor purchase pricing or Shopify sale pricing, fill those in under Vendor Purchase Pricing / Base Prices. Pricing fields also support inheritance, the same as attributes — set a price once on the style and every colour/size can inherit it, or override it individually where needed.
- Click Create to save. The product is not published anywhere yet — it only exists in ItSynx until you choose to publish it.
You can keep coming back to a product to fill in more detail over time before publishing it — there’s no requirement to have everything finished on day one.
Publishing Products
Once a product (and any variants) are ready, click Publish on the product’s Edit page. A confirmation dialog appears — “Are you sure you wish to publish [code] and its variants?” — click Yes, Publish to confirm.
What Gets Published
- Publishing a style publishes the style itself plus every one of its unpublished colour/size products.
- Publishing a colourway publishes that colour’s size products (and the style too, if it hasn’t been published yet) — sibling colours are left alone.
- Publishing an individual size product publishes just that item (and the style, if needed).
- Colourways themselves are never published as separate items — they’re an ItSynx-only organisational layer. In NetSuite, you’ll only ever see the style and its individual colour/size items.
- Anything already published is simply skipped, so it’s always safe to hit Publish again after adding new colours or sizes — only the new items go out.
While It’s Publishing
Publishing happens in the background so you’re not left waiting. Once you click Yes, Publish, the product shows a Queued for Publishing or Publishing… badge until it’s done — the Publish button is disabled during this time to prevent it being sent twice. Refresh the page to see the badge change to Published once complete (or back to Unpublished if something went wrong, in which case you’ll see an error banner and can fix the issue and try again).
Published, Unpublished, and Partially Published
A style shows as:
- Published (green) — the style and every one of its colours/sizes are published.
- Unpublished (amber) — nothing in this style has been published yet.
- Partially Published (amber) — some colours/sizes are published and others aren’t. This is completely normal while you’re gradually adding new variants to an already-live style.
Wherever variants are shown, any unpublished colour or size is highlighted so you can see at a glance what’s still outstanding.
Purchase Pricing Requirements
If purchase pricing is required for your catalogue, a colour can’t be published until it has purchase pricing set. If pricing is missing, that colour’s sizes are simply skipped when you publish the style — everything else goes ahead as normal, and you can publish that colour once pricing has been added.
Keeping Published Products Up to Date
Once a product is published, you don’t need to “re-publish” it to make changes — any edit you save is automatically detected and sent to NetSuite in the background. Some fields (like a style’s stock description) automatically cascade down to every colour and size beneath it when changed; others only apply to the exact level you changed. You don’t need to think about which is which — ItSynx handles the propagation for you.
Seeing Who Made a Change
The Product Change Log records who requested each publication or update sent to your connected systems, including bulk publishing and UPC assignment. The person’s name remains in the history even if they later leave your team or change their account name, making it easier to follow up on changes.
Filter the log by status (queued or running, successful or failed) and by period (today, the past 7 days or the past 28 days). The Product Changes card on your Dashboard counts changes by status for the same periods; click any count to open the Product Change Log showing exactly those changes.
When enabled for your team, ItSynx also records the person’s name on the affected inventory items in NetSuite. This includes newly published products and variants, as well as updates to existing items.
When the recorded name changes, it appears in NetSuite’s System Notes, so you can investigate who requested a change directly in NetSuite. If the same person makes consecutive changes, NetSuite may not show a new System Note for their name each time; the Product Change Log in ItSynx still records the person against each action.
Speak to your ItSynx administrator if you’d like this enabled for your team.
UPCs
UPCs (barcodes) are handled entirely by ItSynx — you never need to type one in.
- When a size-level product is published for the first time, ItSynx automatically assigns it the next available UPC from your team’s pool.
- If a product already existed in NetSuite before you started using ItSynx and doesn’t have a UPC, the Edit page shows an Assign a UPC button next to the UPC field. Clicking it reserves a UPC, which appears on the page straight away, and sends it to NetSuite in the background.
Running Low on UPCs
Your Dashboard shows a Product Audit card with a UPC supply banner that warns you before you run out:
- An amber warning appears when your remaining UPCs are getting low, based on your recent usage rate.
- A red warning appears when you’re critically low.
- If you run out completely, publishing new products is blocked until you add more UPCs, and the card tells you directly.
Click through from the card (or visit UPC Ranges from the Products menu) to see exactly how many are left and add more when needed.
Deleting Products
The Delete button follows the same published/unpublished logic as Publish, to make sure you never delete something that’s live in NetSuite:
- Unpublished products (and unpublished colours/sizes) can always be deleted.
- Published products cannot be deleted — the button is disabled with a tooltip explaining why.
- For a style with a mix of published and unpublished variants (Partially Published), you can delete the style record itself only once every colour/size beneath it is unpublished; individual unpublished colours or sizes can still be removed on their own in the meantime.
Bulk Publishing
From the Products list, filter to Unpublished only, then select the products you want to publish using the checkboxes — either individually, or all of them at once with Select all matching current filters that are not already queued. A summary banner confirms your selection (e.g. “12 products selected on this page”), and clicking Publish Selected publishes all of them in one go. Anything already queued is automatically skipped, so it’s safe to re-run a bulk publish without creating duplicates.
Monitoring Your Catalogue
Product Attributes
Use Product Attributes (from the Products menu) to manage the custom fields available on your products (e.g. Colour, Fabric Content, Department) and the list of options available for each — add new colours or categories, reorder them by drag-and-drop, or deactivate ones you no longer use without losing historical data. Some option lists (like Countries) are supplied by NetSuite and can only be toggled active/inactive rather than freely edited.
Dashboard & Audit Checking
The Product Audit card on your Dashboard gives you an at-a-glance health check — unpublished product counts, UPC availability, and any data errors that need attention. For a full breakdown, visit Product Audit from the Products menu to see and resolve specific issues (for example, duplicate UPCs, or products that exist in one system but not another).
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to publish a product as soon as I create it? No — create it, fill in as much detail as you like over time, and publish whenever it’s ready.
What happens if I add a new size to a style that’s already published? Nothing changes for the existing colours/sizes. The style will show as Partially Published until you publish the new size too — clicking Publish again only sends the new one.
Why can’t I delete this product? Published products can’t be deleted, to avoid orphaning something that’s already live in NetSuite. Unpublish isn’t a real state you can revert to — if a product genuinely needs removing from NetSuite, speak to your ItSynx administrator.
Why is the Publish button greyed out? Either the product is already published, or it’s currently queued/publishing from a previous click — check the badge next to the product code for its current status.
Where do UPCs come from? From your team’s UPC pool, assigned automatically the moment a product is first published. You never choose or enter one yourself.