At this stage, we assume you have already installed the plugin and have created all your suppliers. We recommend that you do a backup on the database before making any changes this way. The first thing we need to do open up the edit page for any random product and press the update button. This will update the database so that all the new custom meta will be visible when we export the products.

Next, in the left admin menu, we go to “Products” and then “All products”. In the top-left region, we find the buttons Import and Export. To make changes to the database we first need to export all products. We recommend only using the default import tool to get the most out of our plugin.

It’s important that you check the “Export custom meta?”. The custom meta is what we are going to change. Next, you click on Generate CSV.

WooCommerce has now generated and downloaded all your products in a single file to your computer. To open up this spreadsheet file you need a program such as Open Office or Excel. Open Office and free and that is what we will use in this tutorial.

Open up the file. The first thing you will see is an option window with a preview of how the document will look once it is fully open. If the spreadsheet looks ok, click Ok-button. Else you might have to change some options to have it display correctly.

The top row explains what each column does. For each row, you have a product.

To make it easier to see what we are doing, we are going to freeze the top row and some important columns to the left. Click on the E2 cell (to the right of “Name” and below “Published”) and then go to Window and Freeze (only for Open Office). This will lock all the rows above and to the left of this cell so that they are always visible. You can also delete all rows that you do not want to update. Doing so will make the document easier to navigate.

Inside this spreadsheet, you can change everything for all products such as price, featured product, description, name, and so on. What we will look for are the headers that start with “Meta: oimwc_”, those are the columns related to the Order and Inventory Manager plugin. If this plugin is the latest plugin you did install then all these columns will be to the far right.

The only type of product you want to pay attention to is Simple and Variation. To remove all other types of products from this document you select the whole “Type”-column “B” by clicking on the “B”. Next, you click the “Sort Ascending” or “Sort Descending” button from the toolbar. It will ask you if you want to expand your selection and yes you want that so click on expand selection.

All your product is now sorted by type. You can now go ahead and simply just select all rows that are not simple or variation and just delete those rows. Don’t worry this will not affect those products in the e-commerce store.

Now the document is fully prepared to make some changes to it.

The columns we want to edit are these:

Meta: oimwc_supplier_id – Here we enter the supplier ID number you want to assign to this product. To find the supplier ID you go WooCommerce > Order & Inventory Manager and click on the supplier tab. To the left of the supplier name, is the supplier ID.

Meta: oimwc_low_stock_threshold_level – Enter the value you want the product to be considered as low in stock. All products that have reached this stock level will be listed inside the Inventory Overview Tab in the OIMWC plugin.

Meta: oimwc_supplier_art_id – Here you enter what the supplier uses as product ID for this product. When purchase orders are created this ID will be visible to the suppliers so they know what you want to buy.

Meta: oimwc_supplier_product_url – If the supplier has a product page for this product then enter the URL to that address here.

Meta: oimwc_supplier_note – Sometimes the product ID is not enough to fully describe the product you want to buy. It might have some special size, print or color. Add that special note here.

Meta: oimwc_supplier_purchase_price – Enter the purchase price of this product. This value is used to quickly calculate PO estimated cost and is also there for your reference to check so the price is correct for the product you buy.

Meta: oimwc_supplier_pack_size – Only available in the Gold and Platinum version. If your supplier has a larger pack size than “1” of this product then enter that value here.

Meta: oimwc_our_pack_size – Only available in the Gold and Platinum version. If this product has a larger pack size the “1” then enter that value here.

Meta: oimwc_physical_stock – This changes the physical units in stock

Meta: oimwc_physical_units_stock – This changes the units in stock.

(only from version 1.2.8) Please note! Only import JUST ONE stock-related data like the WooCommerce stock, Physical stock, or Physical Units in stock. After the import is done a script will be run to update the related stock data to match the newly imported data.
Example: You import 10x physical stock and have a pack size set to 3. The script automatically runs and is changing your physical units in stock to 30 (10*3) and sets your WooCommerce stock to Physical stock minus reserved products for orders. The same script will also be run when importing new pack-size data.

From version 1.2.9 we also support importing with the WP all import plugin. If you use this plugin and import pack size data then you must also include any stock-related data as well even if it is the same as the database already have. If the stock-related data is not included then the automatic stock script will not be run to fix related data.

If any cell converts what you write to a date, then select that whole column, right-click on it to bring up the menu, and select format cells. Under category, you select text and then hit OK. You have to enter the value again but this time it will not change to a date.

When you are done, save the file!

Go to Products > All products and this time click the import button in the top-left region.

Click the “Choose File” button. Select your file we did just edit and click the “Open”-button.

IMPORTANT Check the box “Update existing products” and click on Continue.

Click on the “Run the importer”-button at the bottom of the page.

Done! All your changes have now been applied.

IMPORTANT Check the box “Update existing products” and click on Continue.

Click on the “Run the importer”-button at the bottom of the page.

Done! All your changes have now been applied.