Supersede a SKU

Praveen S S

Updated 08 April 2026 21:43

Only retailer users can supersede an existing SKU

This functionality is aimed to help retailers keep track of their product’s packaging lifecycle by understanding if a Bill of Materials was specifically replaced by a new Bill of Materials for a product.

Common reasons to supersede a SKU would be:

Redesign / new packaging for existing product
Structural packaging change to one or more components. Examples include:
- New label size for artwork / copy
- Change to component specification for manufacturing reasons
- Change to component specification for sustainability metrics (lightweighting, EPR fee mitigation, removal of problematic attributes)
Seasonal variant of a SKU with different packaging

For example, you have a product, ‘Pepperoni Pizza’:

‘Pepperoni Pizza’ is currently sold using the packaging described in the Bill of Materials ‘BOM 1’.
- The Product – Bill of Materials relationship is a SKU: ‘SKU 1’
- ‘SKU 1’ currently has a status of ‘on sale’, as it can be found in store.
The packaging for ‘Pepperoni Pizza’ has been re-designed to be more in line with the brand and this redesign will result on the label being 30% bigger. There are no changes to any other components in the BOM.
- Because the packaging will change, the product ‘Pepperoni Pizza’ now needs to be linked to a new Bill of Materials: the Bill of Materials with the bigger label.
- The ‘supersede’ functionality will allow the retailer or brand owner to create a new Bill of Materials for the same Product (this will result in a new SKU: ‘SKU 2’) and ensure there is a link between ‘SKU 1’ and ‘SKU 2’ so the retailer knows that ‘SKU 1’ was replaced by ‘SKU 2’
- On sale and off sale dates can be used to manage the new SKU ‘SKU 2’ replacing the old SKU ‘SKU 1’

Without the supersede functionality, there would be no links between the SKU and it would be impossible to know if a SKU replaced another one, or if the product simply has multiple SKUs / packaging Bills of Materials.

A SKU can be superseded when:

It’s currently ‘on sale’ or ‘off sale’ (it has been previously ‘on sale’), 'cancelled'.

A SKU can be superseded by another SKU that:

Is assigned to the same product supplier assigned to the ‘previous’ SKU.
Is linked to the same product linked to the ‘previous’ SKU.

How to

1. Retailer users can create a new ‘supersede SKU’ brief by clicking on the ‘Supersede SKU’ button that can be found on the context menu of a SKU or the ‘New Brief’ button.

2. In the ‘Create brief’ page retailers will select the SKU that is being superseded, add brief instructions and a due date.

If the page was accessed by clicking on the ‘Supersede’ button of a SKU, the SKU in the brief page will be pre-selected.

3. Once the ‘Supersede SKU’ brief is created, it will kick off a ‘Create Bill of Materials’ task for the product supplier, same process as a ‘normal’ brief.

The process to create and approve the new Bill of Materials for the new SKU that is superseding the existing one is the same as the current process to create/approve a Bill of Materials:

If any of the above tasks have been created as a result of a ‘Supersede SKU’ brief, the details of the SKU that is being superseded will be displayed as part of the brief instructions:

4. Once the new Bill of Materials is approved and the new SKU has a status of ‘Available for sale’, on/off sale dates will need to be entered for the new SKU, same as for any other SKU.

5. When the retailer users click on the ‘Add dates’ button and the ‘add dates’ modal pops up, they will see the details of the SKU they are adding the dates to and the SKU that is being superseded, its predecessor.

If the retailer is editing the on/off sale dates of a SKU that has both a successor and a predecessor, the details of both the predecessor and successor SKUs will be displayed in the popup.

Note: the dates of sale of the connected SKUs cannot overlap

Note: on sale dates cannot be added to a SKU with a predecessor if the predecessor SKU (the ‘old’ SKU) doesn’t have ‘off sale’ dates.