Documentation

Product identifiers

Each product must have a unique identifier (ID).

  • Your products IDs must be used consistently across all your sales channels (e.g. e-commerce websites) and on Print Trail. This means that each product must have the same SKUs/ISBNs in all places – this is because Print Trail uses this data as the key product ID (You can change product names as often as you like and product names do not need to be consistent across your websites and Print Trail)

  • Each Print Trail product must have at least one of these product IDs:

    • SKU
    • ISBN (books only)
    • EAN
    • UPC
    • GTIN

Let’s explain these in more detail:

SKUs and PTSKUs

Two types of SKU are used for products on Print Trail:

SKU

This is your own ‘stock keeping unit’ number, or code, for your product. Usually SKUs are codes that you create and use only within your operations and with your suppliers (e.g. Print Trail) to track stock movements, quantities, and sales.

SKUs are designed to be used across all your systems, so must be consistent

Each Print Trail product must have a SKU. If you don’t create one when adding a new product, Print Trail copies other product ID data (e.g. your product’s EAN, UPC, or ISBN) to also be used as the SKU.

You can edit your products’ SKUs at any time.

PTSKU

PTSKU is a product ID, for internal Print Trail use only.

PTSKU is generated automatically by Print Trail, by combining your team code and the SKU.

PTSKU is not editable. Once created, it is fixed (even when you change a product’s SKU).

Barcode data

You may have barcode IDs for your products. There are several schemes for barcodes though most have been included in the GTIN schema. Print Trail accepts all the most common barcode IDs, and here’s a quick explanation:

GTIN

The Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is an identifier for products, and is used on barcodes.

GTIN is the superset of the other commonly-used product identifiers including EAN, UPC, ISBN-13

Print Trail validates all data added to a product’s GTIN, EAN, UPC, and ISBN-13 fields.

On Print Trail, if you save valid data in one EAN, UPC, ISBN-13, the data will also appear in the GTIN field, and vice versa.

GTINs can be 8, 12, 13, or 14 digits long.

ISBN (books only)

ISBNs are unique, global product identifiers, used only for books. When you see a barcode on the back of a book, this is normally an ISBN.

There are two types of ISBN:

  • ISBN-10 - this is a legacy format comprising 10 characters
  • ISBN-13 - the more modern 13-character format, which is part of the wider GTIN standard (see below)

Note: ISBN-10 can be converted to ISBN-13. Print Trail does this automatically. However, not all ISBN-13 data can be converted to ISBN-10.

EAN

Formerly known as European Article Number (hence the name EAN), EAN is now officially referred to as the The International Article Number.

EAN is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify products. The EAN standard has been subsumed into the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) standard (see GTIN, above).

UPC

Typically used in North America, the Universal Product Code (UPC) is a barcode ID for tracking products and sales.

EAN-13 was developed as a superset of UPC, meaning that UPCs are valid despite UPCs gradually being phased out.

More information

More info on the product identifiers mentioned here is available on these external sites: