Integration Guide

This document covers key principles around how to structure your data and how to integrate your data sources with Toolio.

Updated over a week ago

Overview

This document explains how to integrate with Toolio. First part of the document covers the data models that Toolio expects and the second part covers how to integrate with your data sources.

For those that prefer a more visual walkthrough, here is a quick video guide that goes over this document and the model & attribute documentation.

Data Models and Attributes

Core Models

Toolio supports importing the following core data models, which are further described in their documentation below. The bolded data models are the required feeds for Toolio to work.

Data Model

Overview

Product (docs / sample)

Variant (SKU) level product meta data along with all the required attributes. Attributes from the Product feed will be automatically used to enrich data from the other seeds.

Sale (docs / sample)

Sales and returns information that is aggregated over a specific time unit, such as day or week. If desired, data can also be shared in the transaction level granularity.

Inventory (docs / sample)

SKU level inventory information by location over time. By default we request ending inventory, along with its Cost, Retail and Ticket value for each timestamp. This should be your 'Quantity Available' or 'Available to Sell' value (not your 'On Hand' value).

Purchase Order (docs / sample)

SKU level purchase order information. This feed is used to calculate On Order metrics.

Receipt (docs / sample)

SKU level Receipts information. This feed is used to calculate Receipt metrics (i.e. new SKU deliveries).

Transfer Order (docs / sample)

SKU level transfer order information. This feed is used to calculate In Transit metrics.

Plan (docs / sample)

Import feed for merchandise plans created outside of Toolio. Plan feed is NOT required for the core Toolio integration. Plans are stored per attribute combination over time.

Assortment Plan Item (docs / sample)

Import feed to add assortment line plans you have created outside of Toolio. Assortment Plan Item is NOT required for the core Toolio integration.

Booking (docs / sample)

Import feed to capture wholesale booking data at the variant (SKU) level. Booking feed is NOT required for the core Toolio integration.

Bundle (docs / sample)

Import feed to map bundles with their component (member) items. All components must also be captured in the Product feed for accurate data attribution. Bundle feed is NOT required for the core Toolio integration.

Pricing (docs / sample)

Import feed to capture cost and price updates over time at a SKU level. The feed shows the effective cost and price information and the start of the effective time period.

Core Attributes

Toolio uses attributes for planning and reporting. Attributes can either be derived or come directly from your data feed. You can think of attributes as dimensions you want to report by or as columns on an Excel sheet. Each model has a set of required, core attributes that are needed for the system to operate. Core attributes are standard across all Toolio accounts. You can see the core attributes in the core model documentation.

Custom Attributes

Each core model also supports adding custom attributes in addition to Toolio's core attributes. Custom attributes allow you to input additional dimensions in the system and use those dimensions for planning purposes. These attributes are customized to your business needs during your account configuration. Below are a few examples for the attributes you might want to add for the different objects:

Product

  • Division (men, women, kids)

  • Department (apparel, footwear, accessories)

  • Class (sandals, boots, sneakers, flats, etc.)

Sale

  • Markdown (e.g. true, false)

The attributes defined on product are automatically associated with Sale, Inventory and Purchase Order, hence if you are using an attribute on Product, you won’t have to add them to the other data models.

Slugs

Since the display name of the attribute can change over time, it is important to have a deterministic value to refer to that attribute, and this is called a slug. Toolio relies on the attribute slug to identify the attribute while importing data. Toolio uses the snake case naming convention for attribute names. With core attributes, the slug will be the value defined in the attribute column in the core model documentation.

Slugs for custom attributes will be prefixed with `col_`. So if you have a new attribute called Division on the Product model, the slug for that attribute will be `col_division`.

Integrations

Toolio supports integration through various methods and systems. Check out our list of integrations below:

Related Articles

Video Overview

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