Removing Items from the Spruce eCommerce Online Store

There are many reasons why you might want to remove inventory items from your online store or hide them from view, and there are several ways to do it. Whether you have to remove them from inventory completely, or you need to remove them temporarily on a seasonal basis, there are a lot of choices for making these changes.

Changing the Visibility of an Item in the Online Store

If you want to maintain the items you have uploaded to the online store but hide them from view:

• Change the item’s E-commerce-enabled setting in Item Maintenance.
  When you uncheck the E-commerce Enabled check box of an item, (Inventory > Item > Common > ECommerce tab > E-commerce Enabled check box) after the inventory sync occurs, the product record remains in the online store but it does not display on the website. Using this approach is particularly helpful for seasonal products (snow shovels, spring garden equipment, etc.) as the item information is still in the online data store, so the records will be updated whenever you change them. When you are ready to display the items again, you simply enable this check box and the item with the current settings displays on your website.

• Change the item’s Disabled setting in Item Maintenance.
  Change the item’s Disabled setting of an item to Y (Inventory > Item > Branch > Disabled) and upload the item to the online store, the product is disabled on the data store the product is no longer visible on the website. As with the E-commerce Enabled check box setting, the item stays in the online store and continues to synchronize the item’s data updates.

Both options can be accomplished through Item Maintenance or Inventory Global Modify utility screens. When you change these settings and re-enable them, they are visible again.

Removing an Item from the Online Store Completely

There are many reasons why you might want to remove an item permanently from your online store. You might do this if your company no longer sells the item or you now see a similar item that is provided by a different supplier instead. These are the ways you can remove these items from the online store without losing the sales data from the original item:

• When replacing an item with a new item from a different supplier, use the Merge/Rename process.
  When you are replacing an item, you don’t want to lose the sales and inventory history pertaining to the old item, so you use the Merge/Rename Item utility to preserve that history. Merging/Renaming the product creates a new SKU for the item so when you initiate the update to the online store, the store removes the online product record of the original item entirely. This cannot be undone.

  Note: If the item you are merging from exists in multiple branches, it only be removed from the online store if the branch record for the item is the default branch set in the Inventory Item Sync parameters. You can learn more about this feature from the Merging/Renaming Items or by reviewing the Removing Dead items topics in the Help System.

• Disable the product’s Inventory Item Sync setting.
  Disabling the Inventory Item Sync setting (Inventory > Database > Item > Common > ECommerce > Item Sync Enabled check box) stops the product from being synchronized with the online store. After this is done, you can delete the product record manually from the EvolutionX Admin dashboard in the Product section.

• Use the Delete Item feature in Item Maintenance.
  If you delete the item entirely from the database (Inventory > Database > Item >  > Delete Item), you remove it from the application inventory entirely. This initiates an update to remove the product from the online store completely. You must have specific administrative permissions to use this feature. This cannot be undone.
  Note: If the product exists in multiple branch locations, the product will only be removed from the online store if the branch record for the item is deleted.

See Also:

Using the EDI Log to Review Spruce eCommerce Item Uploads

Setting Up and Using Inventory Item Sync