Sync inventory from a Google Sheet

If you track inventory in a Google Sheet, connect it once and SeaChange keeps your catalog and stock in step automatically — ideal for refill and by-weight shops that manage counts in a spreadsheet rather than a POS. Go to Store settings → Integrations and find the “Google Sheets — inventory sync” card.

1. Click Connect Google Sheets and sign in with Google (you approve access to just the one sheet you pick).
2. Choose your spreadsheet in the Google picker.
3. Add a configuration: tick one or more tabs that share the same columns, then map your columns once — a product-ID column and a quantity column are required; name, price, UPC, unit, category, and brand are optional.
4. Choose which store location that configuration’s counts belong to, then Save.

After that, SeaChange checks your sheet about every 15 minutes and updates stock to match — set a quantity to 0 when something sells out and it stops showing to shoppers; raise it when you restock. New rows create new products automatically, and you can press Sync now on the card any time.

💡 If you map a category column: values that match one of SeaChange’s departments (Kitchen, Supplements, Surf…) are used for shopper search, and any other value becomes your own store-specific category — created automatically and kept private to your store for organizing your catalog. You can keep using whatever category names you already have in your sheet.

Multiple tabs and layouts

• Keep separate tabs (say, one per department) that all use the same column layout? Select them together in one configuration and map the columns once — it applies to every tab you tick.
• Have a tab with a different column layout? Add another configuration for it. You can add as many configurations as you need, each with its own columns and store location.
• Each tab is checked for changes on its own, so editing one tab only re-syncs that tab.
• When you save, SeaChange checks that every column you mapped actually exists in each tab you ticked — if a tab is missing one (for example a tab without a “Brand” column), it tells you which tab and column so you can fix the mapping or move that tab to its own configuration.

What your sheet needs

• A product-ID column — a SKU / internal code is best (a UPC/barcode also works). This is how SeaChange matches each row to a product. Keep this value stable: renaming a product means changing the NAME column, not this one.
• A quantity column — whole numbers or decimals (e.g. 9.5) for by-weight stock.
• A header row with clear column names (any rows above the header are ignored).

Your product name vs the SeaChange catalog name

When you map a name column, that becomes YOUR store’s name for the product — you can rename it in the sheet any time and it updates in SeaChange (no duplicate), as long as the product-ID column stays the same. Your name is what shoppers see on your store page and in search results. Separately, every product has a shared “SeaChange catalog name” used across the marketplace; your sheet never changes that, so your wording never affects other stores. You can see both on the product’s page under Inventory.

The sheet manages your name, quantity, price, and unit. Product photos and descriptions are managed in SeaChange (add them under Inventory) — they’re included when you export, but the sync never overwrites them.

Map a Brand column and the brand shows under the product name for shoppers on your store page and in search — and helps SeaChange match your products. Brand is shared across the marketplace catalog, so SeaChange fills it in when a product has no brand yet and never overwrites a brand that’s already set.

When you remove a row from your sheet

Syncing adds and updates products but never deletes them — a spreadsheet row is too easy to remove by accident for us to hide a product automatically. So when you delete a row, its product stays in your catalog. After the next sync, the Integrations page shows a “No longer in your sheet” list of those products. Review it and deactivate anything you meant to remove: deactivating hides the product from shoppers but keeps its stock history, and you can reactivate it any time. You can deactivate items one at a time or tick several and deactivate them together. Nothing is ever deleted for you.

💡 The connection is read-only — SeaChange never edits your sheet. Rows missing a product ID or a quantity are skipped and reported, not counted as zero. If the same product ID shows up in more than one synced tab, only the first is applied and the rest are noted in the sync log — keep each product on a single tab. If a sync can’t complete, the card names every tab that needs attention in one message — fix them all and the warning clears on the next sync (you won’t have to fix one, re-sync, and discover another). Disconnect anytime from the same card; your inventory data stays. Prefer a one-time upload instead of a live link? Use CSV import.