04Channels & organization
A channel's settings
Its alerts, its rules and its stock, and when it wins over the organization.
Each channel has its own settings screen. Almost everything comes from your organization: the alerts, the price rules and the stock split. We call that inheriting: the channel uses your organization's values and receives its changes. What you change inside the channel applies only to it.
How to get there
In Channels, click “Configure” on the channel you want. At the top you see its name, whether it's “Your own store” or a marketplace, and its role (step 6). On the right, “Pause channel” and “Disconnect”. Below, the tabs “General”, “Alerts”, “Price rules” and “Stock”. Except on Shopify there's also “Categories”, where you match each category of your catalog that has no equivalent with one of the channel's. On WooCommerce, also “Plugin”, with its own tutorial.
Who wins: the organization or the channel
In Organization → “Rules” and → “Alerts” are your organization's values. When you save there, they reach the channels that inherit; not the ones with their own settings. Alerts and price rules are inherited separately. If you change an alert or a rule on a channel that inherits, when you save Koalab warns you: “This channel will stop following your organization”. If you confirm, only that part stops inheriting. A channel's are changed by a member, an admin or the owner; the organization's, only by an admin or the owner.
The “Alerts” tab
Eight conditions that hold a price change before it reaches this channel: “Sale price exceeds regular price”, “Sale price drop”, “Price increase”, “Price decrease”, “Price set to zero”, “Negative price”, “Empty price field” and “Price below cost”. Three carry a % threshold: the sale price drop, the increase and the decrease. A held change waits in “Pending approval”. It's saved with “Save alerts”. Below, “Stock alerts” warn you of low and out-of-stock with this channel's own threshold, and save on their own.
The “Price rules” tab
At the top is the count: “13 rules inherited, none overridden”, or “11 inherited · 2 overridden here”. It adds up the eight alerts and the five blocks: “Markup”, “Price rounding”, “Minimum price”, “Maximum price” and “Stock limits”. Each block turns on for the regular and the sale price, and inside has a switch for each. One your plan doesn't include shows “Requires … plan”. It's saved with “Save rules”. On the leading channel they can't be turned on: it receives the catalog's value as it is. “Price from cost” isn't here: it belongs to the organization.
Mock-up: the same rule, inherited in the organization and overridden in the channel The “Stock” tab
“How much stock this channel sees” is read-only: it says “Full”, “Split evenly” or “Capped”, with “Inherited from the organization.”. The split is decided in Organization → “Inventory”. On WooCommerce there's “Catalog visibility”: with “Restore visibility on restock”, a sold-out product that gets stock again receives the visibility in “Visibility to apply”. On a marketplace, “Which price to publish when the product has variants” appears: the channel takes a single price and you choose which; with “The lowest”, the expensive variant sells at the cheap one's price. On Mercado Libre, at the end, shipping and listing type.
The channel's role
Next to the name, the blue badge is a dropdown: “This channel leads” (what changes on it enters your catalog and reaches the others), “Receives from Koalab” (it gets what you change in Koalab; if someone changes price or stock there, it waits in “Pending approval”) and “Independent” (its own catalog, sharing neither products nor stock). An admin or the owner changes it, with confirmation, and it saves instantly. Handing it the lead asks you to type the channel's name: on its next import, its price, stock and texts replace your catalog's, and changing the role later doesn't undo that. A newly connected channel says “Role not chosen” until you choose. One in another currency can only be “Independent”.
Details worth knowing
- On a channel that receives from Koalab, name, description, category or photo edits made in the store itself don't enter Koalab, and the next save in Koalab replaces them. Make them in Koalab or on the leading channel.
- Each block saves on its own —“Save alerts”, “Save rules”, “Save visibility”— and the “Stock alerts” by themselves: there's no single button for the whole screen.
- To inherit again there's “Inherit again”, next to the “Price rules” count, and “Inherit the alerts again”, in “Alerts”. They show while that part doesn't inherit. They copy the organization's values over the top —the channel's own are lost— and the channel receives its changes again.