When importing a list of items into NetSuite, what is the best way / best practice to determine if the item exists whether as an inventory item or non-inventory item? When adding/updating an item and looking for an existing item, it is tied to the record type chosen on the import, correct? But what if on the import for inventory item x, the item already exists as a non-inventory item? I’d love to get some insight and best practices for this scenario. Thanks.
Hi Daniel P,
Yes — when adding or updating an item, the lookup for an existing record is indeed tied to the record type selected in the import.
In a case where you’re importing an inventory item that already exists in NetSuite as a non-inventory item, one effective approach is to create a separate NetSuite lookup export (using “Look up additional records (per record)”) just before the import step.
From this lookup, you can fetch both the internal ID and item type, and then use the response mapping to those values into your record.
In the import step, you can configure input filters so that only records where the item type is empty (for new item creation) or ‘inventoryitem’ (for valid updates) proceed into the import.
This way, records of other item types are ignored, and only inventory items — or new items that don’t yet exist — are imported.
The exact configuration can be adjusted based on how you want to handle each case.
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