Supported Configurations for Bandcamp Sync for Shopify

Bandcamp Sync for Shopify is designed to work with standard Bandcamp and Shopify configurations. Syncing Bandcamp inventory to a non-standard Shopify set up may result in hard-to-identify errors. In particular, Bandcamp Sync for Shopify expects the following to be true:

Single Shopify store per Bandcamp Label or Artist

Bandcamp Sync for Shopify can only connect a single Bandcamp Label or Artist account to a single Shopify store. You cannot connect a Bandcamp Artist or Label account to multiple Shopify stores, and you cannot connect multiple Bandcamp accounts to the same Shopify store.

If you have a Bandcamp label, you’ll probably want to connect your account to the Shopify store that corresponds to it. Merchandise associated with artists belonging to this label will then sync naturally with corresponding artist merchandise on the Shopify label store. Of course, this depends on how you have set up your label’s and artists’ merch set up on Shopify - ultimately it’s up to you to decide which Bandcamp label or artist corresponds with which Shopify store.

Shipping origins in your Bandcamp label or artist account should map to Shopify store locations

Bandcamp uses shipping origins to indicate where a merch item will be shipped from, and therefore inventory levels are always associated with shipping origins. This means that a shipping origin on Bandcamp must correspond to a location on Shopify, not with a store on Shopify. You will be prompted to set up a mapping between the shipping origins and locations before your first inventory sync.

The mapping does not have to be 1-1:

• If you have more locations in your Shopify store than you have shipping origins for your Bandcamp label or artist, inventory at the extra (i.e., unmapped) Shopify store locations will simply be ignored.
• If you have more shipping origins for your Bandcamp label or artist than you have locations for your Shopify store, inventory at the extra (i.e., unmapped) Bandcamp shipping origins will be set to zero when you sync.

However, since Bandcamp Sync for Shopify can only link one Bandcamp label or artist account with one Shopify store, you cannot map individual shipping origins on Bandcamp to separate Shopify stores that have been set up to work around Shopify locations.

Standard use of SKUs across both platforms

Bandcamp Sync for Shopify identifies the merch it can sync via matching SKUs*. A merch item in your Bandcamp label or artist account and a product in your Shopify store that have the same SKU are taken to be the same item.

Standard use of Bandcamp merch options and Shopify product variants

Bandcamp supports options as a way to distinguish different physical versions of the same merch item: the classic example of an option is t-shirt size. When you sell a t-shirt of a certain design, you probably sell it in different sizes - S, M, L, XL, etc. In this example, the sizes are the merch item’s "options". On Shopify these are referred to as the product’s "variants".

Bandcamp sync for Shopify assumes that the option denotes a physical difference - size, color, signed-vs-not-signed, type-of-material, etc, not as a way to internally indicate a marketplace or a geographical location.

In the t-shirt example, the SKU of the small (S) size of the t-shirt on Bandcamp would be different from the M size of that t-shirt on Bandcamp, but it should be the same as the SKU of the S size of that t-shirt on Shopify.

*A note about SKUs

If SKUs are new to you, you may want to read this article by Shopify. They’re simple to use, but you will want to approach them systematically.

On Bandcamp, you add SKUs to merch items via the merch editor — scroll down to the Quantities section and enter a unique SKU for the merch item in the SKU text box. If the product has options, you should add SKUs for your options too.

Note that, in accordance with best practice with regard to SKUs, Bandcamp attempts to make them unique. If you duplicate a SKU that’s in use for another merch item in the account, Bandcamp will append an integer-based suffix when you save, in order to make the SKU unambiguous.