Why Shopify and your Meta catalogue drift apart

When you connect your Shopify account to Meta, your products and collections are synced to Commerce Manager automatically, and you keep managing products primarily in your Shopify admin [1]. Meta says updated product data syncs to the catalogue every few minutes [1].

Even so, what you see in Shopify can differ from what Meta shows. Meta's guidance: if the wrong data is showing in your ads or shop, it is most likely wrong in your catalogue, so check the product there first [3].

1. The product was never included in the channel

To sync to Commerce Manager, a product must be included in the Facebook & Instagram sales channel on Shopify. Meta describes finding products that are not syncing by filtering products by sales channel in your Shopify admin, and including a product in the channel from its product page [1].

When you make a product unavailable to the channel, Shopify notes that it is removed from all features at once, because the channel uses a single catalogue for shops and for ads [2].

2. Archiving and deleting behave differently in each place

Products archived on Shopify do not sync to Commerce Manager, and are removed from it if they had already synced [1]. Meta notes that for some partner platforms, including Shopify, archiving a product on the platform deletes it from Commerce Manager, while archiving manually in Commerce Manager overrides the partner platform [9].

3. Manual edits in Commerce Manager do not last

Meta recommends not editing Shopify-synced products manually in Commerce Manager, because those changes are overwritten by the next sync from Shopify [1][10]. If an issue in Commerce Manager requires a data change, make it on Shopify and wait for the next sync [1].

4. More than one data source updates the same field

If a supplementary feed or another source updates the catalogue alongside Shopify, you can configure which source controls which attribute. Some attributes already have an automatically prioritised source; for example, price comes from your partner platform by default if you use one [4]. When a product is updated by more than one source, a Last updated by column in its details shows which source last updated each attribute [3]. For images that look wrong despite being set up correctly on Shopify, Meta points out that a supplementary feed may be overriding them [8].

Meta also describes an advanced setup in which a data feed is the primary source of product data and the Shopify sync only updates price, availability and quantity. In that setup Shopify does not add new products, delete products or update any other attribute [1].

5. Meta may be updating products from your website

A feature Meta is rolling out gradually can scan publicly available product data on your website and update your catalogue when it detects a mismatch, for example by adding images or matching a description to your site [5]. These updates are on by default and appear without approval; they do not update attributes such as title, price, availability and quantity [5].

6. Price and currency

Meta expects price as a number, followed by a space and a 3-letter ISO 4217 currency code [11]. Because a shop can show only one currency, a product priced in a different currency from most other products in the shop is not shown there; for selling in several countries Meta recommends a country feed [7].

On Shopify, channel markets come into play: when you create one, connected sales channels inherit the parent country or region market's catalogue and currency by default, and you can customise availability, pricing or currency for the channel [6]. If you set a currency that is not a preferred currency for the channel, Shopify shows a warning [6]. Meta notes that localised data set up under Shopify Markets is synced to Commerce Manager for supported markets [1].

7. Stock behaves differently per channel

Out-of-stock products are not shown in ads, but they remain in shops for up to 56 days, marked as sold out [7]. So a product missing from ads but visible in the shop is not, by itself, a sync failure.

8. Images and variants

On Shopify you can add multiple images per product but only one image per variant, so variant products usually end up with one image per variant in the catalogue [8]. If you change the image order, you also need to make another change to the product data for the new order to sync [8].

Checklist

1. Is the product included in the Facebook & Instagram channel?
2. Is the product archived on Shopify or in Commerce Manager?
3. Which source last updated the field (Last updated by)?
4. Are automatic updates from your website switched on?
5. Does the price's currency match the shop and the channel market?
6. If the data is right on Shopify but not in the catalogue, Meta's advice is to wait for the next sync or contact the platform's support team [3].