How Categories Flow from Source Inventory to Your Channel

Categories move through three levels, and each step is made by a builder, not by linking them by hand:

1. Inventory categories come from your source, in Category 1, Category 2 and Category 3 on each Source Inventory item.
2. The Product Builder turns them into Product Categories when it builds or rebuilds a product, following your mapping template.
3. The Listing Builder turns Product Categories into Listing Categories for each channel when it builds listings, and the channel integration sends those to your store (for example BigCommerce).

There is no screen where you pick an inventory category and link it to a product category yourself. The link is created when the builder runs. A fixed category value in a mapping template, or another source with a higher priority building the same product, can give a product a different category than its inventory has.

• Product Categories: click Products (tag icon) in the left menu, open Product Catalog and click View Categories at the top right. Each category has a link icon. Hover it to see how many inventory categories are linked, and click it to see them by source. No inventory categories are linked to this product category means no product has been built into that category from a source category yet, for example a category you created in the tree yourself.
• Listing Categories: the same View Categories link on Channel Listings, with a Channel selector. The link icon on each category shows the product category it comes from.
• From one item: on a Source Inventory parent, click the gear icon next to Categories to open To Product Categories: the product categories this item's categories will build to. On a Product Catalog parent, the same gear opens To Listing Categories for the channel you choose.

In To Product Categories or To Listing Categories, (Unsaved) next to a name means that category does not exist yet in your Product Categories (or that channel's Listing Categories). It is a preview: the category is created with that name the next time the builder runs for this item. There is nothing to save on that screen. Build or rebuild the product (or its listings) to create it.

Categories usually sit on the product parent. Whether a build updates an existing parent is a Product Builder setting:

1. Open Settings > Mapping Utilities > Builders and click the builder you use.
2. Under Product Match Rules, find For product parents, should existing data be updated during building?
3. Choose Always update, or Only update if new inventory is linked if you only want it when a new source item joins the product. With Don't update (the default for a new builder), a rebuild leaves an existing parent's data, including its categories, as it was.
4. Save the builder.

Then rebuild: in Product Catalog, select the variants, click Actions > Re-Build Product(s), choose Select a specific builder & mapping template if you need that builder, and check Re-Build Parents As Well?. The same question exists for variants: For product variants, should existing data be updated during building?

To get the new categories to your store, rebuild the listings too, so the Listing Builder creates the Listing Categories, and let the channel's sync send them.

To rename, move, merge, add or delete categories, use View Categories > Edit Categories and then Save Categories. See Customize Product Categories and Customize Listings Categories.