Handling Hidden Products Across Sales Channels
Summary
Learn how Flxpoint manages product visibility for channels that do not support a native hide or unhide feature, ensuring products are delisted to prevent overselling.
In Flxpoint, moving a product to the Hidden queue is intended to temporarily remove it from public view on your sales channel without deleting the listing entirely. However, not all sales channels support a native hide or unhide status. For channels that lack this specific functionality, Flxpoint uses a delisting strategy to ensure your inventory remains accurate and you do not sell items you intended to hide.
When you move a product to the Hidden queue for a channel that does not support hiding, Flxpoint will automatically delist the product from that store. This is a critical safety measure to prevent products from remaining active and sellable while they are in a hidden state in Flxpoint.
Why it matters
Previously, some integrations (like GunBroker) would simply log a sync error when a user attempted to hide a product. Because the sync failed, the product remained active on the marketplace, leading to potential overselling of items the merchant believed were offline. The current consistent strategy across all channels is to trigger a delist command when a native hide option is unavailable.
The impact of hiding a product depends on the capabilities of the specific sales channel integration:
Channels with hide support: The listing is updated to a hidden or draft status on the marketplace. It can be toggled back to active easily.
Channels without hide support: The listing is removed (delisted) from the marketplace. To make the product live again, you must move it out of the Hidden queue and perform a sync to relist it.
Note: If you are using GunBroker, moving a product to the Hidden queue will now actively delist the item on the GunBroker site rather than just reporting a sync error.
What happens if I move a hidden product back to active?
For channels that do not support hiding, Flxpoint will treat this as a new listing request and attempt to relist the product on the channel using the existing mapping templates and product data.
Will I see a sync error when hiding products?
No. By standardizing the delisting workflow, Flxpoint eliminates the sync errors that previously occurred when trying to send a hide command to a channel that did not recognize it.