What Is This Tool For?

Sometimes your online store holds products as separate standalone items — for example, a blue shirt and a red shirt listed individually — but you want to sell them on Amazon or eBay as a single listing where the buyer picks a colour or size.

The Describe Variations tool lets you group those products together inside ChannelUnity and define what attribute (e.g. Colour, Size) distinguishes them. ChannelUnity then presents them to the marketplace as a proper variation family.

These groups exist only inside ChannelUnity. Nothing is changed in your online store.

Getting There

Setup → Settings → Describe Variations

From the listing page you can see all the groups you have already created, create new ones, edit existing ones, or delete them.

Creating a New Parent Product

Click New Parent Product. The form has three steps.

Step 1 — Select Products

Use the search box to find the products you want to group. You can search by SKU, title, or (on Shopify accounts) Shopify SKU.

Adding products:

• Click Add next to any result to include it in the group.
• You need at least 2 products to proceed. The maximum is 100.
• Products already assigned to another group are shown with a reason and cannot be added.
• Regular parent products (from your store) cannot be selected — only standalone or child products.

Removing products:

• Click Remove in the selected products table at any time.

Once you have at least 2 products, the Analyse Attributes button becomes active.

Step 2 — Choose Variation Attributes

Click Analyse Attributes. ChannelUnity inspects the selected products and groups their attributes into two categories:

• Varying — attributes whose values differ across the products. These are your candidates for variation axes (e.g. Size, Colour).
• Constant — attributes that are identical across all products (collapsible, shown for reference).

Selecting attributes:

• Tick 1 to 3 attributes that define how the products differ from each other.
• ChannelUnity validates your selection in real time: the chosen attributes must uniquely identify every product in the group. If two products share the same combination of values, the tool will tell you which ones clash and the Next button will remain disabled.
• Once your selection uniquely identifies all products, a green confirmation message appears and the Next: Set Parent Details button becomes active.

Tips:

• If no varying attributes are found, the selected products may be duplicates or share no distinguishing data. Go back and check you have the right products.
• Attributes like price, quantity, and internal Shopify/platform IDs are excluded from the list — they are not meaningful variation axes.

Step 3 — Details & Save

Parent SKU: Enter a base SKU. ChannelUnity will automatically append _PARENT to create the final SKU (e.g. if you type BLUE-SHIRT, the parent SKU becomes BLUE-SHIRT_PARENT). The tool checks in real time whether the SKU is available.

Title: Pre-filled from the first selected product. Edit it so it describes the group as a whole rather than one specific variant — for example, change “Blue Shirt Size M” to “Blue Shirt — All Sizes & Colours”.

Description: Also pre-filled. Review and adjust it in the same way.

Click Save Parent Product. On success you are returned to the listing page.

Editing an Existing Parent Product

Click the SKU link in the listing table to open the edit form. The three-step wizard reopens with:

• Your existing child products already selected in Step 1
• Your existing variation attributes pre-checked in Step 2
• Your existing SKU (read-only), title, and description pre-filled in Step 3

You can:

• Add new children — search and add products as in the create flow
• Remove children — click Remove in the selected panel
• Change the variation attributes — re-run the analysis and pick different attributes
• Update the title or description

Click Update Parent Product to save.

The parent SKU cannot be changed after creation.

Deleting a Parent Product

Click Delete in the listing table. A confirmation dialog explains what will happen:

• The parent product is removed from ChannelUnity.
• Children are unlinked from the group but remain in your product catalogue as standalone products.
• If the parent is currently listed on any marketplace, it will no longer receive updates. You should delist it from those marketplaces before deleting.
• The original parent/child relationships from your online store can only be restored by running a full store sync.

Things to Be Aware Of

Children lose their original store grouping. When a product is added to a bespoke parent group, any existing parent relationship it had is removed. If you later delete the bespoke parent, those children become standalone — they do not automatically return to their original store group. A full store sync is needed to restore the original structure.

The group is not automatically listed. Creating a parent product does not automatically list it on any marketplace. You still need to enable listing for each marketplace subscription in the normal way.

Changing children triggers re-validation. If you go back to Step 1 and add or remove products, the attribute analysis is cleared and you must redo Steps 2 and 3. This ensures the variation attributes still uniquely identify the updated set of products.

Up to 100 children per group. This is a hard limit. If you need more, consider whether the products should be split into separate groups.

Search returns up to 50 results. If you don’t see a product in the search results, refine your search term. The search matches against SKU, title, and (on Shopify) Shopify SKU.

Example Walkthrough

You sell a t-shirt in 3 sizes (S, M, L) and 2 colours (Red, Blue) — 6 standalone products in your Shopify store. You want to list them as one Amazon variation.

1. Go to Setup → Settings → Describe Variations and click New Parent Product.
2. Search for “t-shirt” and add all 6 variants to the selection.
3. Click Analyse Attributes. The tool finds z_option_Size (values: S, M, L) and z_option_Colour (values: Red, Blue) as varying attributes.
4. Tick both. The validation confirms all 6 products are uniquely identified (each has a distinct Size + Colour combination).
5. In Step 3, enter TSHIRT-ALL as the base SKU (final SKU: TSHIRT-ALL_PARENT). Update the title to “Classic T-Shirt”. Click Save.
6. The new parent appears in the listing. Enable it for Amazon listing in the normal way.