Inventory update best practices questions

[CRagsdell]

I am helping develop a store that will eventually have thousands of products. I am using CSV imports to add products and update inventory, and was hoping to get some advice on how to best deal with products that are no longer available or have temporarily have gone out of stock.

I am provided a daily CSV file exported from their legacy POS system that I then match up with another database to create a CSV file that includes in-depth descriptions and images, etc.

The result is a CSV file of all current items they want to sell. It doe NOT include any of the previously imported items that are no longer in stock.

So, my next step is to figure out how to best deal with any item that is NOT in the current list.

I can filter the older items using the search filters to deal with them, but that is time consuming.

I can create a CSV of items that are no longer in stock, but not sure if I can "automate" archiving or deleting them through the import process. 

That leads me to my questions...

1. Should I archive or delete the older products that are no longer in stock?

2. If the item comes back in stock, will an import of the product "unarchive" it and put it back in the store as active, or would it create a new product and leave the old "version" of the product archived?

Any advice would be most appreciated!

[paul_n · Accepted solution]

This thread is about Shopify Flow. You might have better luck asking in another place.

[CRagsdell]

Sorry about that! I'll mark this as answered and post it elsewhere. 

[CloudlabSam]

The Mechanic app can help with automating this.