SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
Definition
A SKU (stock keeping unit) is the code a store assigns to each distinct sellable item so it can track stock, price, and sales at that level. A t-shirt in three colors and four sizes is one product but twelve SKUs. SKUs are internal and the store chooses the format, unlike a GTIN barcode, which is global.
Why it matters for your store
Stock is counted per SKU, not per product. If you know you have twelve t-shirts but not which sizes, you cannot promise a customer a medium. SKUs are what make inventory, picking, and reordering precise.
They also tie systems together. The SKU is the key that matches a product in your store to the same product in your accounting software, your supplier's price list, and your marketplace listings. A stable, consistent SKU scheme saves hours of reconciliation later; a scheme that changes with every relabel creates duplicates everywhere.
Keep SKUs human-readable. A warehouse worker should be able to see from the code roughly what the item is.
How Kambloo handles it
Each product variant on Kambloo carries its own SKU, along with its own price, stock level, barcode, image, and discount. Stock is tracked and reserved per variant, so a sale of size 42 never reduces the count for size 43.
SKUs are included in CSV and Excel import and export, so an existing product list can be loaded with its codes intact. In feeds such as Google Merchant, the variant SKU is used as the item identifier and the product groups its variants under one group identifier. Marketplace listings map to variant fields, and the public API exposes variants with their SKUs for accounting and warehouse systems.
A low-stock threshold per variant triggers an admin notification and a webhook, and a stock movement history records every change by SKU.
Questions about SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
What is a good SKU format?
Short, readable, and consistent: a product code followed by option codes, such as BOOT-LTHR-BLK-42. Avoid leading zeros, letters that look like digits, and anything that must change when the price does.
Is a SKU the same as a barcode?
No. A SKU is your internal code and you can define it any way you like. A barcode (GTIN) is a global number assigned through GS1 and identifies the product across every seller.