If you have pre-existing products in your WooCommerce store it's possible to link these to your Inkthreadable account for fulfilment.
We always recommend creating new products in your Inkthreadable account and exporting these to a linked store where possible. Exporting products guarantees the data required for fulfilment is accurate, and can save you time over manually linking pre-existing products.
Linking existing products
To get started, log in to your WordPress site and your Inkthreadable account.
If you're adding printed neck labels you'll need to first make sure your WooCommerce brand profile is set up. You can learn how to do this here.
Head to your WooCommerce product linking page at Account > Integrations > WooCommerce > Link products.
This page will list every product in your WooCommerce store. If you've exported any products from Inkthreadable they will appear here as 100% linked, and any products created by another means will show as not linked yet.
The left hand column will show a list of your WooCommerce products, with the right hand column showing which Inkthreadable product they're linked to.
This page allows you to edit any product link between WooCommerce and Inkthreadable, so you can manually link pre-existing products, or edit the link for anything previously linked.
In this example the Skull Fire Tee is listed as Not linked yet. This means the product exists in WooCommerce but has not been linked to Inkthreadable. Any orders placed for this product will not be sent to Inkthreadable for fulfilment.
You may be selling products you don't want Inkthreadable to fulfil. In this case, leave those products unlinked and orders for them will not be sent to Inkthreadable for fulfilment.
To link any products you want Inkthreadable to fulfil, click the Edit button.
The left hand column will display your product variants, and the right column is how those variants are linked to Inkthreadable. Click the Link product button to select which base garment to use for fulfilment. You can click through the various menus, or use the search bar to find a specific product if you know the name or SKU.
Select your base product and click the Link options button to link your variants. A window will pop-up to help with quick-linking all variants.
The system will auto-detect your colours and sizes to pair them with equivalents from your base product. If there is a mismatch between your colour or size names it may not detect them correctly, so make sure everything is paired up as required. Match up your variants and click Link.
If each of your colour/size variants has an equivalent in your base product, the bar will progress to 100% linked. If you have variants in WooCommerce with no equivalents in your base product the bar will not progress to 100% as they'll remain unlinked. In this case, you'll need to delete any unlinkable variants from the product in WooCommerce to avoid orders being placed for them when they can't be fulfilled.
Adding design files
Assigning a base product and linking its variants to your own tells Inkthreadable which SKU to use for fulfilment. The next step is adding a design file and mockup for us to use during production.
There are two options for uploading design files:
Uploading a master design file
This is a single file that's used for all variantsUploading custom design files
This is a custom file applied to a single variant
If your product has one colour variant, uploading a master design file is the quickest and simplest option. This master file is automatically used for all variants that don't have a custom design file attached.
If you're selling a product with multiple colour variants you may want to use alternative design files for fulfilment. For example, a black garment may need a different design file to a white garment to make sure the decoration stands out. In this case you can upload a design file to each variant that requires one. If a design file is uploaded to a specific variant it will overwrite the master file uploaded.
In either case it's best to upload a master file, and then upload any alternative design files to the variants that require them.
Scroll to the bottom of the linking page. You'll find headings for Mockups and Designs.
Under the Designs heading, click Upload. Browse for your design file to upload it as a master file, then select which decoration area this design applies to.
If you select an embroidery position you will see the option to select your thread colours appear. You can select up to six.
If you don't select any thread colours here we can't guarantee which threads will be used during production. Any mismatch will not be deemed a fault.
Fixing the red exclamation error
If you see a red exclamation mark appear when uploading your design file it means your file has not been saved with the correct dimensions for decoration.
If this isn't corrected, the system will fill the decoration boundary with your file resulting in warped prints. You can see the design warp in the preview box, indicating how it will print.
To fix this, take note of the dimensions below the decoration position and re-save your design file to these dimensions. Alternatively, you can use the Photoshop templates available on each product page to position your designs and save to the correct dimensions.
With your master design file saved you can upload custom design files to any variants that require them.
Uploading custom variant design files
Scroll to any variant requiring an alternative design file and click the Upload button. Follow the same process above to upload your design file, taking care to select any required thread colours for embroidery or fixing any incompatible design file dimensions.
You will need to do this for each variant needing its own design file.
Adding mockups
Scroll back to the bottom of the page to find the Mockups heading. Mockups are used during production to assess the decoration result.
The system will automatically display any images available from your WooCommerce product page here. Click any you would like to use for mockups to add them to the product link. Alternatively, you can upload additional files using the Upload button.
For each mockup uploaded, select which decoration area it relates to.
Your mockups must be representative of a decoration that Inkthreadable can achieve. Uploading unachievable mockups resulting in products that don't match will not be considered a production fault. You can download mockups from any Inkthreadable product page to upload here if needed.
Adding printed labels
If a product is available for relabelling, the option to add a printed label will be available in the variant settings.
There are two options for uploading labels.
To use the same label for all variants, scroll to the topmost variant and under Branding options, select your brand and the label you'd like to apply. Click the Apply these options to all variations button to update all variants.
Adding a different label to each size mostly follows the same process.
Scroll to a variant you'd like to add a label to. Under Branding options, select your brand and the label you'd like to apply.
Add a label to each variant you'd like to use them for.
The cost of adding a label is displayed under the branding options for each variant. The product cost will update in real time, and will calculate your profit based on the sale price on WooCommerce minus the product cost.
If no Brand is available in your drop-down it means you haven't set your brand profile up. If no Label is available, it means you haven't saved any labels to your brand profile. You can learn how to set up your brand profile here.
Click Save to return to your list of linked products.