Stack the Same Product's Sizes into One Online Listing

A garden center usually sells the same plant in several sizes — a shrub in 1-gallon, 3-gallon and 7-gallon, for example. Each size is its own item in the POS, because each one has its own price, cost and count. But on your online store, shoppers should see one listing for the shrub, with three size choices, not three unrelated listings competing with each other.

Whether that happens is decided entirely by how the item's description is split across the Name, Variety, Color and Size fields in the POS. If the size is buried inside the item's Name ("10 Inch Boston Fern"), your online store has no way to tell that item apart from its siblings, and it draws a separate listing for every size.

This guide walks through checking your items, fixing them one at a time or in bulk, and the things stacking gets you once it works.

Availability: which stores this applies to

Size stacking is a feature of a VMX-built online store. If VMX built and hosts your store, everything on this page applies to you and needs no setup — it is how the store renders listings. If VMX does not host your website (for example, you run your own WordPress or Shopify site), your web team controls how products group, and this page does not apply — though splitting the name fields properly is still worth doing for signs, tags, reports and searching in the POS.

Interested in a VMX-built online store? Contact help@vmxllc.com.

What makes two items stack into one online listing

Your online store builds a listing card by taking the item's description, removing the Size from the end, and then removing the Color from the end. Whatever text is left over is the grouping key: every item that produces the same leftover text is drawn as one card, with the individual sizes listed underneath it.

The description itself is assembled by the POS from six pieces, in this order:

department prefix + sub-department prefix + Name + Variety + Color + Size

So in practice, two items stack into one listing when all of these are true:

They have the same department and sub-department (so their prefixes match).
Their Name matches exactly — including capitalization and spacing.
Their Variety matches exactly — including capitalization and spacing. Two items that both have no Variety normally match too, but if one of them will not join the group, re-save each item in the group the same way (see the troubleshooting section).
Everything that makes them different lives in Color or Size.

An example that stacks correctly — three items in the same department and sub-department:

Name	Variety	Size
Hydrangea	Endless Summer	1 Gal
Hydrangea	Endless Summer	3 Gal
Hydrangea	Endless Summer	7 Gal

The same three items, named the way they often arrive from an old system, which produces three separate listings:

Name	Variety	Color	Size
1 Gal Hydrangea Endless Summer
3 Gal Hydrangea Endless Summer
7 Gal Hydrangea Endless Summer

Nothing is left in the Size field to strip off, and the leftover text is different for each row, so nothing groups.

Check whether an item's sizes will stack online

Before changing anything, confirm what is actually stored in the four fields — the item's description on screen looks the same either way.

Open the item: go to Inventory, click Search, and click into the item.
Look at the 📝 Description section. It shows a read-only Dept. Prefix, a read-only Sub Dept. Prefix if the item is in a sub department, then the four editable fields: Name, Variety, Color and Size.
Ask two questions:
- Is the pot size, height or count in the Size field — and only in the Size field? The Size box shows a "Qty+Unit" hint: values like 1 Gal, 3 Gal, 10 in, #7 belong here.
- Do Name and Variety read the same as they do on the item's siblings, character for character?
At the top of the item page, the breadcrumb bar shows the item's department, then its Name, then its Variety, then its Size as dropdown buttons. Open the size button: it lists every item in the same department that shares this item's Name, Variety and Color, with the on-hand quantity beside any size that has stock. If that dropdown does not list the sizes you expect, the fields are not split the way you think they are — nearly the same match is what the online store groups on. If there is no size button in the breadcrumb at all, the item's Size field is empty, which is the clearest sign the size is buried in the Name.

Split a crammed item name into Name, Variety, Color and Size

Fix one item at a time on the item page. The POS rebuilds the item's full description from the four fields every time you save, so you never edit the combined description directly.

Go to Inventory, click Search, and open the item.
In the 📝 Description section, move each piece of the text into the field it belongs in:
- Name — the generic product, shared by every size and variety ("Hydrangea", "Boston Fern", "Cedar Mulch").
- Variety — the specific cultivar or version ("Endless Summer"). Leave it blank if there isn't one, but leave it blank on every sibling, not just some of them.
- Color — the color, if color is what distinguishes the item.
- Size — the pot size, height, weight or count, and nothing else ("1 Gal", "10 in", "2 cu ft").
Click the save button at the top of the item page.
Repeat for every size of the same product, typing Name and Variety identically each time. Copying and pasting from the first item avoids a stray capital letter or a doubled space splitting the group.

Two things to know while you do this:

Spacing is stored exactly as you type it. A trailing space after "Hydrangea", or two spaces where one belongs, is kept and makes that item's grouping text different from its siblings' — even though the item looks identical on screen. This is the single most common reason a group refuses to stack, and copy-and-paste is the cure.
Changing these fields changes the item's description everywhere: receipts, reports, signs, tags and your online store. That is normally what you want, but plan bigger renames for a quiet time of day.

For what each of the four fields is conventionally used for, see Item — Name/Variety/Color/Size.

Split crammed names in bulk with the Import/Export spreadsheet

Fixing a whole department by hand is not realistic. Export the items to Excel, split the text there with spreadsheet formulas, and import the result.

Go to Inventory and click the Import/Export tab.
In the Export Inventory Data panel, use the Departments selector to pick the department (or a single sub-department) you are cleaning up. Working one department at a time keeps the files small and the review manageable.
In the Columns to include picker, click None, then open the Item name category and tick Name, Variety, Color and Size. These four are treated as one group — the picker turns them on and off together. PLU and Time Stamp are always included and cannot be unticked.
Click Export and open the downloaded file.
In the spreadsheet, split the crammed text into the four columns. Keep every row's PLU and Time Stamp exactly as exported — the PLU is what the import matches each row to an existing item on, and the Time Stamp is what stops the import from overwriting newer changes made in the POS.
Back on the Import/Export page, choose your file in the Import Inventory Data panel, leave Actually save the changes unchecked, and click Upload. This is a preview: it lists every change it would make, row by row, without saving anything.
Read the preview. Look for rows where the split went wrong, and for anything marked SKIPPING.
When the preview is right, upload the same file again with Actually save the changes ticked.

Points specific to splitting names this way:

The four name fields move as one. Name, Variety, Color and Size are applied together against a single conflict timestamp — if one of them is blocked because that item changed in the POS after you exported, all four are held back for that row rather than half-applying. If rows come back as SKIPPING, export again to pick up the newer data, redo the split on the fresh file, and re-import.
Emptying a field works. A blank cell clears that field on the item, which is exactly what you need when you move text out of Name and into Size.
Watch the length limits. Name and Variety hold 75 characters; Color and Size hold 32. A value that is too long fails on the real import even though the preview looked clean.
The import never changes quantity on hand, and it matches rows to items by PLU — so don't renumber or re-sort the PLU column.

Full mechanics of the Import/Export tool — creating new items, conflict handling, error messages and Excel gotchas — are in Attribute Management & Import/Export.

Show a different name online without renaming the item in the POS

Sometimes the POS name is right for staff and wrong for shoppers, and you don't want to change what cashiers and reports see. Every item's Website tab carries four overrides that apply only to your online store:

Web Name
Web Variety
Web Color
Web Size

Each field shows the item's regular value as grey placeholder text; the small share icon beside each one copies that value in so you can edit it. Leave a field blank and the website uses the item's regular value.

The catch that matters for stacking: as soon as an item has any one of these four filled in, its online description is rebuilt as Name + Variety + Color + Size without the department and sub-department prefixes (using the web value where you set one, and the item's regular value where you didn't). An item with a web override and a sibling without one therefore produce different grouping text, and the card splits in two.

So the rule is all-or-nothing per group: if you use the web name overrides on one size of a product, fill them in on every size of that product, with Web Name and Web Variety typed identically across the group.

The same rebuild happens for an item whose base unit of measure has been renamed away from the default EA on the Parent/Child tab. If one size of a product is set up that way and its siblings are not, the card splits for the same reason — see Unit of Measure.

For everything else on that tab, see Item Website tab and Website Sync.

What stacking gets you on the storefront

Once a product's sizes group correctly, several things happen without any further setup.

One card per product on category and search pages. The card carries the product name and lists each size as its own row underneath, with that size's price and availability. Sizes on a card are ordered by Web Sort Order first, then by price from low to high. By default, a card with more than five sizes shows the first four and collapses the rest behind a "N more options..." link; some stores have that limit set differently.

Size buttons on the item page. Open any size and the page shows a row of buttons for the product's other sizes, labelled by their Color and Size, with the size you are viewing highlighted. Clicking one jumps straight to it. These buttons only appear when the item you are on has something in its Color or Size field — another reason not to bury the size in the Name.

Sold-out sizes still sell the sizes you have. The size buttons list the siblings that are in stock (on hand minus reserved, above zero) or flagged Usually pre-order?, plus the size being viewed. An item with Keep Inventory? unticked always counts as in stock, since the POS holds no count for it. A shopper who lands on the sold-out 1-gallon from a search result still sees buttons for the 3-gallon and 7-gallon rather than a dead end.

Photos and web descriptions carry across sizes. A size with no photo of its own borrows a photo from another size of the same product (same department, Name, Variety and Color), so you only have to photograph one pot size. In the same way, a size with no web description borrows the description from an in-stock sibling that has one. Attribute values can be shared across sizes too — that behavior is enabled per-client by VMX; contact help@vmxllc.com if you want it turned on for your store.

Push items, departments and collections to the front of a listing

Listings are ordered by a sort number before anything else, so you can pull your best sellers and seasonal categories to the top instead of living with alphabetical order.

For an item: open the item, go to the Website tab, and enter a number in Web Sort Order. Lower numbers come first. Leave it blank and the item sorts after everything numbered, alphabetically among the other blanks. A sort number set on any one size of a stacked product applies to the whole card, so number one size per product and leave the rest blank — if two sizes of the same product carry different numbers, only one of them decides where the card lands, and which one is not predictable. To pin an item to the end of the list instead, give it a negative number: -1 sorts last, -2 second-to-last.

For departments, sub departments and collections: go to Inventory, then Departments. Each of the three tables on that page — Departments, Sub Departments and Collections — has a Sort column. Set a number there (a department's is edited as Web Sort Order in its edit panel) to pull that department, sub department or collection forward in the menus and category lists on your online store. Blank sorts last, alphabetically.

Web Sort Order only drives the default order. When a shopper chooses their own sort on the storefront — newest, price, name — their choice takes over.

Troubleshooting: one product still shows as several separate listings

Work through these in order. In every case, fix the item in the POS — your online store mirrors it and updates on its own, usually within moments.

Check the four fields, not the description on screen. Open each item and read Name, Variety, Color and Size in the 📝 Description section. A description that looks right can still have the whole thing sitting in Name.
Compare Name and Variety character for character. "Hydrangea" and "hydrangea", or a doubled space, are different keys and split the card. Copy and paste from one item to the others.
Check they are in the same department and sub-department. Different departments mean different prefixes, which means different listings even when the names match.
Check the Variety field is used consistently. One size with a Variety and its siblings without one will not group. Either fill it in on all of them or clear it on all of them.
If the fields look identical and it still won't group, re-save every size. Open each item in the group, retype Name and Variety the same way (paste from one item into the others), and click save on each. Two items can hold values that print the same but are not stored the same — a leftover space, or a field that was cleared on one item and never used on the other. Saving them all the same way makes the stored values match.
Check the web overrides are all-or-nothing. If some sizes have a Web Name, Web Variety, Web Color or Web Size and others don't, fill the group in or clear the group out.
Check every size is actually online. A size only appears on the card when Show item on web? (on the Website tab) and Allow Selling? are both ticked. See Website Sync.
Give the sync a few minutes, then reload the storefront page. If the site is still showing the old grouping after 15–30 minutes, contact help@vmxllc.com with an example item.

How specific should the item be in the first place?

Splitting the name fields is about how an item is described. A separate question is how many items you should have — whether every variety deserves its own SKU, or whether a generic SKU per cell size is enough. That decision affects purchasing, receiving, tagging and checkout speed as much as it affects your website. See SKU Planning Strategy.