Shopify Import Settings — Pricing, Stock, Collections, Metafields

Where to find import settings

On the embedded Shopify app, the import form has a Customize button next to Start import. Open it once, set things up the way you want, and close it — every subsequent import on this store inherits those settings.

Settings live in your shop's preferences, so you can use the same store from multiple browsers or devices and the rules stay the same. They also apply to single-URL imports, category-page imports, the website bulk importer, and the browser extension — there's only one source of truth.

Store visibility — Draft vs Active, sales channels

Two settings under Store visibility:

• Product status — Draft (default) or Active. Drafts are hidden from your storefront so you can review before publishing. Active products go live immediately.
• Publish to channels (only shown when status is Active) — Online store only, All sales channels (Shop, POS, etc.) or Don't publish to any channel. The third option is useful if you're using a custom channel integration that needs to opt products in itself.

Inventory — tracked or not, multi-location

Two modes:

• Don't track inventory (default) — products are always available for purchase. Best for dropshipping and print-on-demand, where stock is effectively infinite from your store's perspective.
• Track inventory — set a starting quantity, choose whether to continue selling when out of stock, and pick which Shopify locations the inventory lands in.

For tracked inventory you can choose All locations (the default) or Specific locations. The location picker is a multi-select that pulls from your live Shopify locations, so anything you've added in Shopify settings shows up here automatically. Multi-warehouse stores tend to want Specific locations + their primary warehouse so dropshipped imports don't pollute their owned-stock counts.

Pricing — multipliers, cost price, compare-at

Three pricing levers:

• Price multiplier — applied to every imported price. Default is 1 (no markup). Set to 2.5 and a $10.00 supplier price becomes $25.00 in your store. Decimal values work — 1.85, 3.33, whatever your margin model says.
• Automatically map source price to cost price (default on) — copies the supplier's original price into Shopify's Cost per item field. Margin reports in Shopify Analytics work straight away without manual cost entry.
• Automatically make products show as "on sale" (default off) — sets a higher Compare at price so the selling price appears discounted. When on, you'll see a Compare-at multiplier field (default 1.2). With a 1.2 compare-at multiplier, your selling price appears as ~17% off the compare-at price.

Collections — auto-assign at import time

Under Organization, the Collections picker pulls every collection from your live Shopify store — both manual and smart collections. Multi-select as many as make sense; every product imported with these settings will be added to all of them.

This is per-import-batch, not per-product. If you're importing a category of desk lamps, set Collections: Lighting, Office before you start the import; they'll all land tagged into both. For your next batch (say, dining chairs), open Customize and swap the collections.

Smart collections with conditions (e.g. "contains tag oak") will pick imported products up automatically based on their tags — you don't need to add them to the picker.

AI category & metafield population

Under Advanced, the Auto-populate category & metafields with AI toggle is on by default. When on:

• We classify each imported product into the right Shopify standard product category. That's the taxonomy Shopify uses for tax categorisation, Shop discovery and ad-platform feeds — getting it right helps with all three.
• We populate any metafield definitions you've set up on Products in Shopify (under Settings → Custom data → Products). If your store has a Material metafield, we extract it from the supplier listing and write it. Same for Country of origin, Care instructions, Dimensions — anything you've defined.

For stores using metafields heavily (jewellery, furniture, anything with rich product attributes), this is the difference between spending an hour per product on attribute entry and getting it for free at import time. If your store doesn't use metafields, turning the toggle off is a small speed-up since we skip an AI pass.

Product Source URL metafield

The Show "Product Source URL" in product settings checkbox (on by default) registers a metafield definition on your Products called Product Source URL. Every imported product gets the original supplier URL written into this field.

It's small but useful: when you're reviewing a draft in Shopify admin and want to double-check what the supplier listing actually says, the link is right there on the product page — no hunting through your import history. It's also handy for re-importing the same product if you ever want to refresh its data.

Recipes for common store types

Pure dropshipping

• Status: Draft until you've reviewed a few
• Inventory: Don't track
• Price multiplier: 2.5–3.5
• Auto compare-at: on, multiplier 1.4
• Auto category & metafields: on

3PL fulfillment from your own warehouse

• Status: Draft
• Inventory: Track, starting quantity 0, location Specific → your 3PL warehouse
• Continue selling when out of stock: off
• Price multiplier: depends on your margin model — typically 1.6–2.2
• Auto cost price: on (so analytics report margin correctly)

Print-on-demand

• Status: Active (the supplier's the source of truth, no QC needed)
• Inventory: Don't track
• Price multiplier: 2.0–3.0
• Collections: pre-pick the relevant collections so the storefront merchandising stays organised

Catalogue rebuild after a Shopify migration

• Status: Active
• Inventory: Track + your real starting quantities (or import 0 and update via inventory feed afterwards)
• Price multiplier: 1 (you're bringing your own pricing across)
• Auto compare-at: off