Possible regression: Variant creation duplicates barcodes

Fulfillment & Inventory
1

I just heard from a merchant that started seeing lots of duplicate barcodes on their account today.

They have products with existing variants, and often create several new variants on those products using that feature where you add new options, via the Admin.

The problem is this process easily duplicates the barcodes of existing variants, with no warning. It then requires a manual override on potentially hundreds of new variants. Here’s an example:

I actually noticed this problem a few years ago, and reported to Shopify. It had been causing several issues for our clients. Then, things got quiet for a while, so I believe Shopify fixed it at some point.

Well, today a merchant reached out inquiring about barcode duplication, and I confirmed with them that the cause is this process. Apparently, the old behaviour is back.

Can someone from Shopify advise on this? The merchant opened a support ticket with Shopify (#70354495). Posting here to try a high priority on this. This causes a lot of headaches for merchants that deal with lots of variants. Thank you.

3

Hey @flavio-b :waving_hand: thanks for flagging this.

The issue causing existing barcodes to be copied to new variants when adding option values has been fixed. With the ticket ID you shared, I saw Support’s conversation where this was confirmed. I also tested this flow and couldn’t reproduce the duplication.

If for any reason you’re still seeing the behaviour on your end, please let me know and I can look into this further. Hope this helps!

4

Outstanding! Looks good on my end now. It’s very much appreciated. :folded_hands: