If you organise products into Etsy categories and Shopify collections, Shuttle can carry that organisation across when it transfers products. On the Categories → Collections page, you map Etsy categories to Shopify collections, and Shuttle uses those mappings in both directions:
Etsy to Shopify: the product is added to the Shopify collections mapped to its Etsy category.
Shopify to Etsy: the product's Shopify collections decide which Etsy category it gets.
Set up your category-to-collection mappings
In Shuttle, open Settings.
Under Catalog Mapping, select Categories → Collections.
Click Add mapping to add a row.
On the left, click Select category. Type at least three letters, click Search, then click Select next to the Etsy category you want.
On the right, click Select collection. Search the same way, then click Select next to the Shopify collection.
Repeat for each category and collection you want to map.
Click Save in the save bar at the top of the page. Your changes are not kept until you save. To undo unsaved changes, click Discard.
Each row in Categories → Collections needs both an Etsy category and a Shopify collection. Rows with only one side filled in are not saved.
To map one Etsy category to several collections, add a row for each collection.
How Shuttle uses your category-to-collection mappings
Transferring from Etsy to Shopify
Shuttle adds the product to every Shopify collection mapped to its Etsy category. Collections the product already belongs to are kept. If a mapped collection no longer exists in Shopify, Shuttle skips it.
Transferring from Shopify to Etsy
Shuttle picks the product's Etsy category by checking these in order:
A match on the Categories page under Catalog Mapping, based on the product's Shopify category.
Your Categories → Collections rows, checked from top to bottom. The first row whose collection the product belongs to decides the Etsy category.
An Etsy category with the same name as the product's Shopify category.
Your default Etsy category.
Rows in Categories → Collections cannot be reordered, and new rows always go to the bottom of the list. So if a product is in several mapped collections, the row added first wins. To change which row wins, clear the rows and add them again in the order you want.
See Ensuring Your Products Are Assigned to the Correct Categories for the Categories page.
Updating products that are already transferred
Your Categories → Collections mappings also apply when you update products that are already transferred, as long as the update includes categories (Shopify to Etsy) or collections (Etsy to Shopify).
Change or remove a category-to-collection mapping
To change one side of a row in Categories → Collections, click Clear on that side, then select a new category or collection.
To remove a row, click Clear on both sides.
Click Save when you are done.
Find a category or collection in the search
The category and collection searches in Categories → Collections show up to 20 results each. If the one you want is not listed, try a more specific search term.