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Understanding How Shuttle's SKU Template Works

Use templates to create consistent, platform-friendly SKUs

Updated this week

If your products don’t have SKUs—or you’d like to standardize or update them—Shuttle provides a powerful SKU generator based on customizable templates. This feature helps automate SKU generation using product data such as titles, variations, vendors, and more.

How It Works

Shuttle’s SKU generator uses a template you define to create SKUs. The template tells Shuttle which parts of the product's data to include and in what format.

You can configure your template in the Product Settings page, under the Automatically Generate SKUs setting.

Example 1: Simple Template

Product Info

  • Title: Super Great Unisex Tee Shirt

  • Vendor: Awesome Shirt

  • Variations:

    1. Medium Size / Blue Color

    2. Small Size / Yellow Color

    3. Large Size / Red Color

Template: TTTT-O1-P1-UNM

Generated SKUs:

  1. SUPE-MEDIUM-BLUE-0421-1

  2. SUPE-SMALL-YELLOW-0421-2

  3. SUPE-LARGE-RED-0421-3

Explanation:

  • TTTT → First 4 letters of the title (SUPE)

  • O1 → First word of the first option (e.g., MEDIUM)

  • P1 → First word of the second option (e.g., BLUE)

  • UNM → Unique number (e.g., 0421)

  • Shuttle adds a variation number (-1, -2, etc.) for uniqueness.

Example 2: Advanced Template

Template: AAABBB-OOOPPP-VVV

Generated SKU for first variation: SUPGRE-MEDBLU-AWE-1

Explanation:

  • AAA → First 3 letters of the 1st word of the title (SUP)

  • BBB → First 3 letters of the 2nd word (GRE)

  • OOO → First 3 letters of the 1st variation option (MED)

  • PPP → First 3 letters of the 2nd variation option (BLU)

  • VVV → First 3 letters of vendor (AWE)

Template Reference Guide

Use the following tokens to customize your SKU template:

Title

  • T – A single letter from the product title (e.g., TTTT for first 4 letters)

  • T1, T2, T3 – First, second, or third word of the title

  • A, B, C – Letters from the first, second, or third word in the title

Vendor / Product Type

  • V – Letters from the vendor (e.g., VVV for first 3 letters)

  • Y – Letters from the product type (e.g., YY for first 2 letters)

Variations

  • O1 – First word of the first option (e.g., size)

  • P1 – First word of the second option (e.g., color)

  • O / P – Letters from the first/second option (e.g., OOO for first 3 letters of the size)

Other

  • UNM – Random unique number (0–9999) to ensure SKU uniqueness

Note: If the product doesn’t have certain attributes (e.g., no variations or no vendor), Shuttle will skip and remove those sections.

Separators

You can use:

  • Dash (-)

  • Underscore (_)

Any other special characters will be removed to maintain compatibility with Etsy’s SKU requirements, which allow only alphanumeric characters, dashes, and underscores.

Prefix & Suffix

You can optionally add a fixed prefix or suffix to all SKUs. This can be helpful for branding or organizational purposes.

Important Notes

  • SKU Length Limit: Etsy allows a maximum of 32 characters per SKU. Be mindful of this when creating your template.

  • No Overwrites: Shuttle won’t update SKUs that already exist unless you explicitly choose to overwrite them.

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