I’d love to see Shopify change the way SKUs are handled when creating product variants.
Right now, if I create a product, enter a SKU, and then add variants, Shopify automatically generates new SKUs for the additional variants by appending a number to the original SKU.
For my business, and every vendor I work with, all size and color variants typically use the exact same SKU - and even if they don’t, the auto-assignment of SKUs it not accurate. I still want the flexibility to assign different SKUs when needed, but in my experience that is the exception, not the rule.
As it stands, I have to manually change every generated SKU back to the original SKU every single time I create a product. It’s a small task, but when you’re adding hundreds or thousands of products, it becomes a significant and completely unnecessary time drain.
My suggestion would be one of these:
Default all variants to the original SKU entered on the product, while still allowing merchants to edit individual variants if they need unique SKUs.
Even better, add a setting that lets merchants choose their preferred default behavior:
Copy the original SKU to all variants
Generate unique SKUs automatically
Giving merchants the choice would accommodate both workflows. I imagine there are businesses that need unique SKUs for every variant, but there are also many of us whose vendors use a single SKU across all variants. A simple preference would save a lot of repetitive manual work.
You’re absolutely right; in order to spare everyone from tedious laborious labor, Shopify ought to include a default setting or preference toggle for this. Until they do, we can simply avoid this inconvenience for the time being by using bulk CSV imports or a bulk editing program to instantly maintain the same SKUs across variants.
If you like my comment please mark it as a solution.
Thanks!
The bulk edit suggestion above helps, but it’s worth being specific about how, because it turns your per-variant fix into one action: open the product, hit Bulk edit on the variants, type the SKU into the first cell, then copy it and paste down the whole column in one go (or drag it down), so it’s one paste per product instead of editing every variant by hand. Not a fix, but it takes most of the pain out today.
The bigger win for hundreds or thousands of products is doing it at import: in your product CSV, just put the same SKU value in the “Variant SKU” column for every variant row of that product, and Shopify imports exactly what you give it with no auto-generation at all, since that behaviour only kicks in when you add variants through the admin UI. So if you’re loading products in bulk, the CSV route removes the problem entirely rather than cleaning it up afterward.
For the feature request itself, you’re right that a preference toggle would be the proper answer, but posting in Shopify Discussion won’t reach the product team since this board is merchants and partners, so put it on community.shopify.dev where Shopify’s people actually engage, and your two options are already written clearly enough to paste straight over.
As of now, this seems like the best potential solution. I don’t want to have to do “another step” every single time I add a product. I already have enough to remember
@AlexandraEllis, that Flow approach can work, with one important detail: Flow has a Product variant added trigger, but it does not expose SKU as a standard update action. The reliable native setup uses Send Admin API request with the productVariantsBulkUpdate mutation.
I would build it with these safeguards:
Trigger on Product variant added.
Read the canonical SKU from the pre-existing base variant, or from an explicit product-level canonical SKU field when some vendors genuinely use distinct variant SKUs.
Stop if the canonical SKU is blank, and only replace the new value when it is blank or matches the store’s generated-SKU pattern. Preserve intentionally different SKUs.
Update only the newly added variant, record any API user errors, and test the workflow on a draft product before turning it on store-wide.
That first-run guard matters because Shopify’s Product variant added documentation notes that the trigger also fires when a new product creates its initial default variant.
TinyOps can configure, test, and hand this over for $299 fixed, delivered within two business days. That includes a draft-product pilot, the blank/manual-SKU guards, a run log, setup notes, one revision, and seven days of defect support. There is no recurring app subscription. Reply here or message TinyOpsStudio through this community profile if you want the setup.
Hi there @AlexandraEllis
It would be nice to have this quality of life fix. Different inventory workflows could be accommodated through a configurable SKU behavior without altering the default experience for all users. In the meantime, a workaround is to import products via CSV with all variant SKUs defined or use a bulk editting app to edit variant SKUs after you have created them. An admin option for merchants to have SKUs generated would really cut down on the repetitive work when you have a medium to large catalog.
