Introduction

In this article, we'll explain the reason behind the "connect to inventory feed" error and show you how to fix it so you can finalize the order and send it through to your vendor's system.

The error

When an order is automatically finalized in Onport, a dropship purchase is created and you may come across this error:

If you click "Review & Send" and then "Details", you'll come across this error:

Why did you get this error?

This happens because the product in Onport is not connected to an inventory feed, thus not allowing the vendor store to recognize the product as its own.

The vendor might have removed it from their store and, in that case, this fix is not applicable - in this case, we would recommend you reach out to your vendor to understand if they're no longer selling this item or if it was removed by mistake.

If it's due to a disconnection between the item in your store and the item in the vendor's inventory feed, this may happen because you or your vendor made some changes to the item, causing the system to lose the connection to the original imported item.

How to fix

You will need to connect the vendor's item with the item in your store. For that, you'll first need to copy the SKU of the item on the order and go to the vendor's inventory feed.

After that, you'll need to look up that SKU in the feed and connect it with the item in your store:

Here's a step-by-step of what's shown in the video above:

1. Copy the SKU from within the order

2. Go into the vendor's inventory feed and search for that product
3. Disconnect the product in the inventory feed (if connected)
4. Click the "Connect" button in the inventory feed and search for the SKU you copied
5. Connect the variant in the feed with the variant in your store in that popup
6. Go into the order and click "Review & Send"

How to prevent this?

❗️First, you need to make sure all the products are well connected. For that, you have 3 options:
- OPTION 1: If you don't have duplicate SKUs, you can always use the setting "Automatically connect by SKU" or, if the vendor has barcodes, you can also enable the "Automatically connect by barcode". You can find this if you go to the Settings of the inventory feed, and then click the Publishing tab:

❗️Just make sure you save and fetch the feed after you've enabled the toggle.
- OPTION 2: The other option is to manually connect all the items within the vendor's inventory feed using the method shown above in the screen recording.

- OPTION 3: A third option would be to import a CSV file with sku and vendor_sku as column headers to map the unconnected items. You would need to create a file with SKU and vendor SKU and import it here: