How to Solve Shopify "Item Not Recognized" Error
As a Shopify Buyer (e.g. a retailer or marketplace) using Modern Dropship to connect with your vendors, you may occasionally receive one of these notifications:
A critical Trade Ops Issue has occurred within Modern Dropship:
A Shopify order could not sync to Modern Dropship. Item not recognized: Short Sleeve T-Shirt | S / White. Shopify Order ID: 4187846737974
Possible next steps:
Edit or Cancel Shopify Order
What does this mean?
This notification means that a customer created an order for Modern Dropship items in your Shopify store. But, when we tried pulling the order into our system, we weren't able to match the order item to a product registered in our system. This causes the Shopify order to be rejected by us, so you will not find the order within Modern Dropship. You will need to follow the next steps or the order will go unfulfilled.
This alert may also be visible on the Trade Ops Issues page.
Why did this happen?
As a either a seller or a buyer, once you products have been imported, you'll want to be cautious of what changes you make to your products and associated variant to ensure it doesn't break the connection to Modern Dropship. Below in green is what you are free to edit, what is in red cannot be edited without re-importing (if you are a seller) or selecting it (if a buyer) in Modern Dropship.
When a buyer engages in any of the actions listed below, it can result in a product becoming broken (no longer mapped):
- Duplicating a product in Shopify
- Adding a variant in Shopify
- Changing inventory locations in Shopify
When a seller engages in any of the actions listed below, it can result in a product becoming broken (no longer mapped):
- Removing a variant in Shopify
- Deleting a product in Shopify
- Duplicating a product in Shopify
- Changing inventory locations in Shopify
If any of these actions occur and a product becomes disrupted, please follow these steps for resolution:
- If a product is deleted, duplicated, or has had variants added or removed by either partner, kindly contact Support@moderndropship.com for assistance.
How do I fix it?
Here's how to fix an order that can't be synced to Modern Dropship due to an "Item not recognized" error:
- You will need to reach out to support@moderndropship.com and we will respond ASAP to get your order moving again! You can actually reply to the original email alert. Start a draft reply now, in the next steps you'll paste in some additional info to help us fix your order:
- Go to the Modern Dropship Products page, and find the product mentioned in the alert. In our example above, this was "Short Sleeve T-Shirt".
- Drill down into the page for that product. Copy the product page URL and paste it into the email.
- On the same page, find the variant that was ordered. In our example above, this was "S / White". Copy the Modern Dropship variant title and paste it into the email. Confirm once again that this variant is the one that you intend to order. If the wrong variant is chosen, your customers will be receiving the wrong item!
- You're ready to send that email! You have given us all the info needed to quickly fix the disconnected item. Your order will sync to your vendor soon!
Note: If you can't find the product or variant within Modern Dropship, you should reach out to your vendor in case they have discontinued the item. If so, you can cancel your order in Shopify and remove the product from being ordered in the future.
How do I prevent it?
"Item not recognized" errors are preventable and predictable. Shopify variants become disconnected from Modern Dropship when you add/delete variants on an existing Shopify product. If you avoid creating/deleting variants this way, you can easily prevent any disconnects from happening!
If you receive this error frequently, you can reach out to support@moderndropship.com and we will run a diagnostic that reports all of your disconnected Shopify items. We will then work with you to fix and prevent further issues!
