Every 3PL Speaks a Different SKU Language
Your Shopify store has one set of SKUs. Each 3PL has another. Someone has to translate between them. Right now, that someone is a spreadsheet.
Here's what happens
You sell on Shopify. Your products ship from two or three 3PLs. Maybe Amazon MCF handles some fulfillment, ShipBob handles the rest, and you just signed with a regional 3PL for faster west coast delivery.
Each 3PL has its own SKU system. Amazon calls your product B07XYZ123. ShipBob calls it SB-WIDGET-BLU-LG. Your Shopify store calls it WIDGET-BLUE-L. Same product, three names.
Somewhere, there's a spreadsheet that maps these together. Maybe it's accurate. Maybe it was accurate three months ago. Nobody's sure.
What goes wrong
Wrong products ship
A mapping points to the wrong warehouse SKU. The 3PL picks what the mapping says. Customer gets a blue widget instead of a red one. You eat the return, the reshipping, and the trust.
New products can't sell
You add a product to Shopify but forget to map it at one of your 3PLs. Orders come in, can't be fulfilled. Cancelled orders, lost revenue, angry customers.
Inventory counts lie
If SKUs aren't mapped correctly, inventory numbers are wrong. You show 50 units available but those are actually a different product. Overselling leads to more cancellations.
It gets worse as you grow
Every new product needs mapping at every 3PL. Every new 3PL needs every product mapped. 500 SKUs across 3 providers is 1,500 mappings to maintain. Add a 4th and it's 2,000.
How most teams handle it
Spreadsheets. One person on the ops team maintains a master mapping file. They update it when new products launch, when 3PLs change their SKU formats, when bundles get created.
It works until it doesn't. That person goes on vacation. The spreadsheet gets out of date. Two people edit it at once. A 3PL silently renames a batch of SKUs. Nobody notices until orders start failing.
The bigger you get, the more fragile this becomes. More SKUs, more 3PLs, more people touching the spreadsheet, more ways for it to break silently.
What changes when mappings are automated
to map a new product across every 3PL, instead of hours of spreadsheet wrangling
about whether mappings are current. Drift detection catches changes before orders break.
to see every SKU across every 3PL. No more jumping between portals and spreadsheets.
There's a better way
SKU Wrangler replaces the spreadsheet with automated mapping, real-time sync, and drift detection across every 3PL.