Custom items are products or services added directly to a Shopify sales order that don’t exist in the Shopify product catalog. Katana can import these as part of order sync.
Configuring custom item importing
Open the Shopify configuration page.
Select the Orders tab and look for Line items.
Checkmark Custom line items to enable import
How they're imported
If a Shopify order with custom line items is imported into Katana:
Each custom line item creates a new item in Katana — never matched to an existing Katana item, even if the name or SKU happens to match.
Physical custom items (those with stock tracking on in Shopify) become Product items in Katana.
Non-physical custom items follow your "Non-physical custom item" setting (Service or Product).
The item's name, price, and quantity from the Shopify order line are copied to the new Katana item and the order row.
Note: Custom items are never reused.
If the same merchant adds five custom items called "Engraving" across five orders, that's five separate Katana items. This is intentional — Shopify's custom line items are by design free-form, not catalog products.
How it affects inventory
Custom items imported as services don't track inventory and aren't part of fulfillment quantities.
Custom items imported as product do track inventory. They start with zero stock, and the order row commits quantity that has to be fulfilled (made or transferred). For a product that doesn't really exist in your manufacturing flow, this can clutter your Katana data.
For most use cases, import non-physical custom items as a service. Switch to Product only if you actually want the items to flow through Katana's inventory and production.
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