Product basics

In the Digital River APIs, you can use SKUs, product details, SKU groups and inventory items to identify and describe your goods and services.
Whether you integrate with Prebuilt Checkout or Direct Integrations, these resources and objects allow you to define each of your product's basic and compliance data.
With the exception of product details, this data is stored in Digital River's system.
Except for SKU groups (as well as inventory items used in the distributed model of Digital River coordinated fulfillments), you're responsible for managing the data contained in these resources and objects.
Text
Resource or object?
Supported product data
Where the product data is stored
Who manages the product data
How you access the product data
When you reference the resource / pass the object
Product data category
​SKUs​
Resource
Basic and compliance
Digital River's system
You
​SKUs API​
​POST/checkouts, POST/checkout-sessions​
Basic and compliance
​Product details​
Object
Basic
Your system
You
System dependent
​POST/checkouts, POST/checkout-sessions, POST/shipping-quotes,
POST/shipping-labels​
Basic
​SKU groups​
Resource
Compliance
Digital River's system
Digital River
​SKU Groups API​
​POST/checkouts, POST/checkout-sessions, POST/shipping-quotes,
POST/shipping-labels​
Compliance
​Inventory items​
Resource
Basic and compliance
Digital River's system
You/Digital River
​Inventory Items API​
​POST/fulfillment-orders​
Basic and compliance
SKUs
In the Digital River APIs, SKUs are one option you have to identify and define your goods and services.
This resource holds data on the most important characteristics of a product. SKUs aren’t meant to be universal. Instead, they should be unique to your business.
Depending on how you send product data in checkout requests or checkout-session requests, your SKUs may only contain basic product data or they may contain both basic and compliance product data.
You manage SKUs and their data is stored in Digital River's system.
If you reference SKU's in checkouts or checkout-sessions, then you'll need to use the SKUs API to define and create a SKU for every digital and physical product in your catalog. We recommend you do this prior to deploying.
Once you start checking out customers, for each items[] that you send in a create checkout or create checkout-session request, you must include a skuId.
For more information, refer to:
The Managing SKUs page
The sending product data in checkouts section on the Describing line items page
The defining a checkout-session on the Drop-in Checkout page
Product details
You can also use productDetails to identify and define your goods and services. This object holds data on the most important characteristics of a product.
You manage productDetails and the object's data is stored in your system.
A productDetails object can only be used to pass basic product data. The compliance data is contained in a referenced SKU group.
In other words, each items[] in a create checkout or create checkout-session request must include a productDetails object and within that object a skuGroupId.
For more information, refer to:
The Using product details page
The Grouping SKUs page
The sending product data in checkouts section on the Describing line items page
The defining a checkout-session section on the Drop-in Checkout page
SKU groups
A SKU group represents a collection of products with similar compliance requirements. This resource is only used to store product compliance data.
Digital River manages your SKU groups and their data is stored in Digital River's system. You can access the data exposed in a SKU group by using the SKU Groups API.
If you're using SKU groups, you must reference the resource when sending product data in create checkout or create checkout-session requests. This reference to the SKU group is either contained in the SKU or in productDetails.
For more information refer to:
The Grouping SKUs page
The sending product data in checkouts section on the Describing line items page
The defining a checkout-session section on the Drop-in Checkout page
Inventory items
The inventory item resource identifies and defines physical products stored in a warehouse. You only use inventory items in Digital River coordinated fulfillments.
An inventory item's data is saved in Digital River's system and you access that data by using the Inventory Items API.
How you interact with inventory items and how you ensure that data contained in the shared attributes of SKU-inventory item pairs remains synchronized, depends on whether you're using the distributed model or the orchestrated model.
For more details, refer to:
The Managing inventory items page
The SKU-inventory item pairs page
Basic versus compliance product data
In the Digital River APIs, there exists two broad categories of product data: basic and compliance. The following table lists the specific data in each category:
Additional compliance data, beyond what is listed here, may be stored in a product's SKU group.
Basic product data
Compliance product data
Name and description
Export control classification number
Image and URL
Harmonized system code
Weight and weight unit
Tax code
Country of origin
Dangerous goods classifications
Part number and manufacturer identifier
Signature requirements
How products are classified as physical or digital
Digital River classifies a product as either physical or digital based on its designated tax code. This code plays a role in determining a checkout's address requirements, its assigned selling entity, and whether the landed cost feature is triggered.
Who assigns a product's tax code depends on whether you're using SKU groups or not using SKU groups.
Using SKU groups
If you (1) associate a SKU group with each of your SKUs or (2) reference a SKU group in productDetails, then Digital River sets the SKU group's tax code.
As a result, you're not responsible for identifying, defining, or managing your products' tax codes.
Not using SKU groups
If you use SKUs without SKU groups, then you're responsible for identifying, defining, and managing each or your SKUs' taxCode(s).
How to identify a physical or digital SKU
Once you create a SKU, its physical attribute allows you to determine whether the resource is classified as digital or physical without having to reference the tax code table.
SKU
{
    "id": "db148281-a5a2-4349-baf2-5d9f76025e56",
    ...
    "physical": true
}

How to ensure SCA compliance

Next - Product management

Managing SKUs

Last modified 14d ago

Export as PDF

Copy link

Outline

Basic versus compliance product data

How products are classified as physical or digital

Using SKU groups

Not using SKU groups

How to identify a physical or digital SKU