How channels work
A channel is a place your organisation sells. Every order belongs to one, so every organisation has at least one from the day it is created.
Who owns your product data
One rule decides how nearly everything on a channel behaves:
How channel onboarding works
Connecting a Shopify store is the one time Yessort trusts a store's data. It has nothing of its own yet, so the store's products and stock are the only sensible starting point. Because that trust is temporary and consequential, it happens inside a guided wizard rather than in one step.
How catalogue linking works
A variant is on sale on a channel when a link exists between the two. The link records which listing on the channel corresponds to that Yessort variant, and it is what lets Yessort push a price or a stock figure to the right place, and route an incoming order line back to the right variant.
How the review queue works
When a Shopify store has a product Yessort does not, that product is proposed, not created. It lands in the channel review queue and waits for a person.
How stock reaches a channel
Yessort publishes a stock figure to each of the store's locations, for each variant listed there. The store displays what it is told; it is never asked what it thinks it has. That direction is fixed — see who owns your product data.
Keeping stock in step
Yessort holds the authoritative stock figure and pushes it to the channel. Even so the two can drift apart — someone edits stock in the store's admin, a push fails, or a channel is connected with listings already in place. Two mechanisms find those differences, and they treat them very differently.
How negative stock happens
A location can end up holding a negative quantity: fewer than none. It is not a data fault, and it is not usually a counting mistake. It is the normal consequence of selling through a channel, and it is worth understanding before you meet it.
How channel orders arrive
An order placed on a connected store becomes a Yessort order without anyone typing it in. From that point it behaves like any other order — see how orders work — but how it got here, and what goes back to the store, are channel matters.
Unlisting and relisting
Taking something off sale on a channel removes the link between the Yessort variant and the listing. The variant is untouched — it keeps its stock, its history and its listings on every other channel. Only that one channel stops selling it.
Safety nets
Yessort finds out what happened on a channel by being told: an order was placed, a product changed, a fulfilment was created. That works nearly all the time.
When an order arrives late
An order usually appears in Yessort within moments of being placed, because the channel tells us. Sometimes that message does not arrive, and the order appears up to an hour later instead.