# How Products Import From Shopify

> What Osello imports from your Shopify catalog — titles, images, variants, prices, barcodes, metafields — how often it syncs, and why Osello never edits your store.

Once your Shopify store is connected, Osello imports your product catalog and keeps it up to date automatically. The import is one-way: Osello reads your catalog but never writes to it, so your Shopify products stay exactly as you keep them.

## What imports

For each product, Osello brings in:

- **Title, description, tags, and status** (active, draft, or archived)
- **Brand** — taken from Shopify's vendor field (on by default; you can turn this off in the integration's settings)
- **Images** — the featured image and additional images, for the product and for each variant
- **Variants** — every option combination (size, color, and so on) with its SKU, barcode, price, and compare-at price (imported as MSRP)
- **Weight and country of origin**
- **Metafields** — custom fields from Shopify (see [Using Shopify metafields](/help/products/using-shopify-metafields))

Inventory locations and stock levels import too, on their own schedule — see [How inventory syncs](/help/inventory-pricing/how-inventory-syncs).

## When it syncs

- **When you first connect your store**, Osello imports your whole catalog except archived products. Active, draft, and unlisted products all come in — archived ones are products you've already retired in Shopify, so they'd only clutter a brand-new catalog. Archive or unarchive a product later and Osello picks the change up on its regular syncs.
- **When something changes in Shopify**, Shopify notifies Osello right away. The product is refreshed shortly after — usually within about 15 minutes.
- **Once a day**, Osello runs a full catalog import. This is also when brand-new Shopify products first appear in Osello.
- **On demand** — open the store menu at the bottom of the sidebar, go to **Integrations**, open your Shopify integration, and choose **Pull Products** from the actions menu.

The on-demand pull asks how much to fetch:

- **Only recently updated products** (the default) — fetches what Shopify reports as changed since the last pull. Much faster, and it's what you want most of the time.
- **All products** — re-fetches your entire Shopify catalog. Reach for this when something older looks wrong or missing in Osello. It takes considerably longer on a large catalog.

Pulling a single product from its product page always fetches that product outright, so there's nothing to choose there.

## Choosing what imports

The Shopify integration's settings let you narrow the import:

- **Tag filters** — import only products carrying certain tags, or skip products carrying certain tags.
- **Excluded product types** — products whose Shopify product type matches an excluded value are skipped. The type "Bundle" is excluded by default, since bundle SKUs usually lack barcodes and aren't accepted by most marketplaces.

Two rules to know about SKUs:

- Every variant needs a SKU in Shopify. Variants without a SKU are skipped during import.
- A SKU has to be unique within its product — two variants of the same product can't share one. If a product repeats a SKU across its variants, the repeat is skipped and Osello records a sync issue naming the SKU, so fix the duplicate in Shopify and the next sync picks it up.

## Osello never edits your source catalog

Your store is the source of truth. Everything marketplace-specific — categories, extra fields, AI-written content — lives on the listing, not the product. That means:

- Nothing Osello does can damage your Shopify catalog.
- A change made in Shopify flows to Osello, and from there to every related listing.
- If you edit imported product fields inside Osello, the next sync sets them back to your store's values — see [Why did my product data change back?](/help/products/why-did-my-product-data-change-back)

## If something doesn't import

When a product fails to import (for example, a validation problem with its data), Osello records the reason. Open the product and choose **Sync Issues** from its actions menu, or check **Sync Issues** on the integration itself.

## Where to go next

- [Connect your Shopify store](/help/getting-started/connect-your-shopify-store)
- [Single products vs. products with variants](/help/products/standalone-vs-configurable-products)
- [Why did my product data change back?](/help/products/why-did-my-product-data-change-back)