Product Sync for E-commerce Platforms

Accurate metadata is important for compliance in regulated markets. Industries such as vape, CBD, alcohol, and fuel require specific details, including shipping restrictions, potency, volume, or size. This data is essential not only for excise tax calculations but also for sales taxes and state reporting, playing a key role in ensuring compliance across industries. For instance, vape products need nicotine content and volume tracking, CBD requires potency and THC levels, alcohol depends on ABV and container size, and fuel products rely on grade and volume sold. In this regard, Product Sync efficiently manages these details across all industries, ensuring accuracy and up-to-date information for compliance.

Currently, clients have two primary methods for updating product information in their Token of Trust HQ dashboard. They can either manually update the products page or use the bulk update option for mass changes. With bulk updates, clients copy the provided spreadsheet, populate it with the necessary details, and return it to our team for processing.

Although these methods are functional, they can be labor-intensive and time-consuming, particularly for clients with large product catalogs. To address this, our team is excited to introduce the product sync process—an advanced, more efficient solution for managing product updates. This new process significantly reduces manual effort, simplifies data management, and ensures a seamless, streamlined experience for our users.

What is Product Sync?

What is Product Sync?

Product Sync actively synchronizes product metadata between your e-commerce store and the Token of Trust platform. Its primary goal is to ensure your product information stays up-to-date, especially for calculating and collecting excise taxes, with a particular focus on vape products.

Once you enable Product Sync, any changes you make to your products—whether adding, updating, or removing them—are automatically reflected on the Token of Trust server. Consequently, this helps prevent missed opportunities for tax collection and, in turn, guarantees compliance with relevant regulations.

Benefits of Product Sync Across Platforms

List of benefits of product sync.

The benefits of Product Sync include:

  1. Save Time with Automation
    Eliminate the painstaking and labor-intensive process of manual data entry across multiple systems. Product Sync automatically updates product metadata in Token of Trust within minutes, saving you hours of effort and ensuring compliance without delays.
  2. Ensure Accurate and Compliant Product Data
    Keep your product data accurate and up-to-date for excise tax compliance. Automatic syncing ensures details like volume, potency, and pricing are always ready for tax calculations and reporting. This reduces regulatory risks and builds customer trust.
  3. Streamline Operations and Reduce Errors
    Automate metadata management to reduce manual work and avoid costly mistakes. Real-time syncing ensures accuracy for excise tax calculations, reporting, and compliance—so you can focus on growing your business.
  4. Adapt Quickly to Regulatory Changes
    Easily adjust product attributes to meet new compliance requirements. Automated updates reflect changes instantly, minimizing the risk of missing tax collection opportunities and keeping your business ahead of shifting regulations.
  5. Scale Seamlessly as Your Business Grows
    As your product catalog expands, Product Sync keeps all your data aligned and compliant. Save time and effort while scaling your business without increasing operational overhead.

In summary, Product Sync enhances operational efficiency, ensures compliance for tax purposes, and provides timely updates to product metadata, ultimately benefiting your Ecommerce store’s performance.

E-commerce Platform Integration

E-Commerce Integration, WooCommerce, Shopify & More

The Product Sync feature is available across several e-commerce platforms, each offering its own specific integration guidelines. To better understand how it works, let’s take a closer look at how Product Sync functions on popular platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.

WooCommerce:

  • Enabling Product Sync: You can enable Product Sync in WooCommerce by navigating to the Token of Trust plugin settings in your WP Admin area. You need to enable the Product Sync feature, which requires you to fill out vape-related tax attributes for products marked as exempt.
  • Metadata Updates: Every time you add or update a product, the necessary metadata will be automatically synchronized with Token of Trust to ensure accurate tax calculations. Fields such as product type, wholesale cost, and regulated attributes (e.g., nicotine content, fuel grade, or THC potency) must be provided during product handling.
  • Error Handling: If required fields are missing, the system will display error messages to alert you to correct the information.

BigCommerce:

  • Webhook Integration: BigCommerce utilizes webhooks to automatically sync product changes to Token of Trust. When you create or update products, those changes are pushed to the Token of Trust dashboard, facilitating easy tax collection.
  • Sync Timing: Syncing is generally instantaneous but may experience slight delays due to dependency on webhooks. The logic for product sync includes necessary API permissions to ensure smooth operations.
  • Special Considerations: Changes in categories do not always trigger a webhook, but inventory updates do. It’s important to set up appropriate webhooks for products and SKUs to ensure continuous syncing.

Shopify:

  • Enabling Product Sync: For Shopify stores, Product Sync is available by request. Contact the Token of Trust Success Team to enable the feature on your account.
  • Metadata Updates: Once enabled, Shopify will sync product metadata, such as volume, nicotine content, or other industry-specific attributes, directly with the Token of Trust system. This ensures accurate and automated excise tax calculations.

FoxyCart:

  • Enabling Product Sync: FoxyCart integration also requires contacting the Token of Trust Success Team to enable Product Sync for your account.
  • Metadata Updates: After activation, FoxyCart will automatically sync product details with Token of Trust to support compliance and excise tax requirements.

Token of Trust seamlessly integrates with Shopify, FoxyCart, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. With Product Sync, you can effortlessly automate metadata management, ensuring excise tax compliance across platforms. As a result, this not only saves you time but also allows you to focus on growing your business more efficiently.

Industry-Specific Metadata for Compliance

Compliance with excise tax laws varies across industries, and each product type comes with unique requirements. For instance, the data needed for vape products differs significantly from what’s required for fuel or CBD products. Vape products, for example, require tracking attributes such as liquid volume (measured in milliliters), while CBD products rely on potency metrics, such as THC or CBD content, typically measured in milligrams. Meanwhile, fuel excise taxes depend on entirely different factors, such as gallons sold or fuel grade.

This variation clearly underscores the need for compliance-driven metadata tailored to each industry. At Token of Trust, we actively simplify this process by mapping product-specific metadata to meet each industry’s compliance needs. To illustrate how we do this, let’s consider vape products as an example. We will demonstrate how Token of Trust maps key product attributes, such as nicotine content, pack size, and volume, to create a clear, structured system that ensures accurate tax calculations.

Rules for Mapping to Token of Trust Metadata

Token of Trust uses these variables to translate the necessary product data for tax calculations:

  • SKU: Pulled directly from BigCommerce’s product variant SKU.
  • Vape system type: Products are categorized by vape system type based on their product category. Any products not categorized are assumed to be exempt from taxes.
  • Exempt status (isExempt): This is determined by whether the product belongs to a mapped category (e.g., closed systems, cartridges). Products without a mapped category are exempt by default.
  • Product name: Token of Trust generates a product name using multiple product attributes such as the product’s name, pack count, flavor, nicotine content, and size.
  • Pricing information: Fields like wholesale cost, retail price, and MSRP are extracted directly from BigCommerce.
  • Pack quantity: The first number found in the option (Pack Quantity) field is used to determine the number of items per pack.
  • Volume in ml: The volume is determined by the first number found in the Size field, multiplied by the pack quantity.
  • Nicotine content: If a variant has nicotine, Token of Trust determines this based on the ‘Nicotine’ option field.

Here’s how it works:

BigCommerce(string) : we use the value of the BigCommerce variable of the same name. So BigCommerce(variant.sku) for example means the sku value of the variant under consideration. 

option(label) : means the optional value for the label of the product variant under consideration. So for example if the Size for a variant was 12ml when we say option(‘Size’)  we mean “12ml”.

Rules of mapping in product sync.

Simplify Tax Compliance with Product Sync
Product Sync integrates seamlessly with platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, FoxyCart, and Shopify to save time and reduce errors.

Ready to streamline your tax management?
Schedule a demo or contact our support team today!