We've made it easy for you to add multiple seasons to a product. This means that when you create a product in Uphance, you can assign several seasons to it and carry stock across each season without setting a new SKU, UPC, or EAN number for the product.

How can this new update benefit your business? If nothing else, it saves you the trouble of creating or uploading products several times across seasons: you only have to create once and add the seasons you want to them.

The best part is that you can delete variations you don't want for each season or add a new one.

However, to enjoy a smooth experience using our multi-season feature, it's important that you understand the logic behind it. Specifically, you need to know what happens to a product's variations when you add multiple seasons, what happens when you try to delete it from a season, how to import multiple seasons from an Excel/CSV file, and many more.

We will cover all that in this article.

When you add a new season to a product, the variations in the previous season will be copied into the second season you added.

So let's say you have a winter jacket product in your Winter Collection season with 3 variations - red, black, and white. If you add another season, say Core Collection, to the jacket, Uphance will copy those three variations into the new Core Collection season, meaning it will have red, black, and white jackets.

But let's say you deleted the white variation (with zero order on it) from the Core Collection, and then you add a new season, say Summer Collection, to the jacket. Will it have two variations (red and black) or three (red, black or white) in the new Summer Collection season?

Bear in mind that the Winter Collection still has three variants, while Core has two because we deleted the white variant. The answer to this question depends on your season hierarchy. By season hierarchy, we mean the sequence in which you arrange your seasons. We mean this:

Priority is given from top to bottom. This means the season at the top will take precedence over the one beneath. As you can see from the screenshot above, the Winter Season is above the Core collection season, and so it will be given a higher priority.

To this end, Uphance will copy the variations in Winter into the new Summer season you just created. This means the new Summer season will have three (3) variations of the jacket, not two. If the Core season was at the top, only two variants would exist in the new Summer collection.

Note: A season doesn't need to be at the topmost top to be given higher priority. Provided it's above the next season, Uphance will give it a higher priority; the position doesn't matter.

Below is an illustration to help you have a firmer grasp of this logic:

What would happen if you tried to add a variation you previously deleted from a season back to it again? For example, let's say you tried to add back the white variation deleted from the Core season in the example we used above.

When you try this, Uphance will throw up an error telling you the variation already exists.

But if you still desire to add variation to the season again, you'd have to contact support.

In the examples we've illustrated so far, we only deleted variations with zero order on them. But what happens if you try deleting a variation that has at least one order on it?

Two possible scenarios can play out here:

Scenario #1: There is an order on the variation but in another season:

For example, there is an order on the red jacket, but the order is coming from the Winter season. However, you want to delete the red jacket from the Core season. In such a scenario, you can easily delete the variation without issues.

Note: If you delete a cross-season variation (a variation available in other seasons) from a particular season, it will still be available in other seasons. For example, after deleting the red variation from the Core season, it will still be accessible in other seasons it was initially added.

Scenario #2: There is an order on the variation and it's coming from the same season:

In this scenario, there is an order on the black variation of the jacket and it's coming from the Core season. And you want to delete that variant from the same Core season.

Well, technically, you can't. If you try deleting it, Uphance will automatically deactivate the variant, which you can always reactivate later.

You also have the option of cancelling the order containing the variation. Nevertheless, you won't be able to delete it.

Yes, you can. You just have to ensure that the seasons you want to add to a product are separated by a comma in the import file.

No, you don't. The system takes care of this automatically.

Firstly, you will see the season(s) for each product at the top-right corner. Select the products you want to add. This can be products that belong exclusively to the initial season you selected or a subset of it but also belong to other seasons.

By default, the Sales Order will have the original season you selected, even though you can change it.

No, you don't have to.

Go to Product eCommerce and click "Product Update". It will create the missing variations on Shopify.

Learn about merging a product here.