Gorgias SKU Generator & Merchant Tools Explained

What the Gorgias SKU Generator is (and isn't)

A SKU — Stock Keeping Unit — is the internal code you use to track a product variant across your catalog, warehouse, and marketplace dashboards. A good one is human-readable and consistent; a bad one is a random string nobody can decode at a glance. The free SKU generator by Gorgias exists to help you produce the good kind at scale.

It is a standalone marketing tool at gorgias.com/tools/sku-generator, not an in-app help-desk feature. You don't need a Gorgias subscription to use it; you enter a company email to start, and then you're in. It's one of a handful of free resources on the Gorgias tools page, which also lists a Shopping Assistant ROI Calculator and a general ROI Calculator. None of these touch your ticketing workspace — they're top-of-funnel giveaways aimed at ecommerce operators.

How to use the SKU generator

The tool is deliberately simple. Per Gorgias's own instructions, the flow is:

1. Enter your company email to unlock the generator.
2. Enter a product type — the broad category (e.g. TSHIRT, MUG, CANDLE).
3. Enter the product name — the specific item.
4. Add up to three unique attributes — the characteristics that distinguish variants, such as color, size, or material (e.g. BLK, LG, COTTON).
5. Generate the SKU, then repeat for each product until you've built out your full catalog.
6. Export the finished list as CSV or JSON to drop into Shopify or another marketplace dashboard. There's a "Clear data" option to start over.

Gorgias also bakes in sensible SKU hygiene: keep codes roughly 7–20 characters, start with letters rather than numbers, and avoid easily-confused characters (the classic O versus 0, I versus 1). The tool does not generate barcodes or QR codes — it's a naming utility, not a labeling system.

That's the whole tool. It's a fast way to impose a consistent naming scheme on a catalog, and for a brand standardizing SKUs before a Shopify migration, it does the job without a spreadsheet formula.

The merchant tools that actually live inside Gorgias

The public generators are useful, but the tools most support teams mean when they say "Gorgias merchant tools" are the ones inside the help desk — the Shopify-powered actions in the ticket sidebar. These are where Gorgias earns its reputation as an ecommerce-native help desk, and they matter because they let an agent resolve an order problem without ever leaving the conversation. If you're new to the platform, our what is Gorgias primer sets the broader context.

1. Shopify order actions. With the Shopify integration connected, agents can act on orders directly from the ticket. Per Gorgias's Shopify Actions documentation, you can create, duplicate, cancel, and refund orders from inside a ticket. Creating a new order lets you add existing products or custom items, apply discounts, adjust quantities, add notes and tags, charge taxes, set the order Paid or Pending, and email the invoice — and you can build a draft order on the customer's behalf that appears in the sidebar separate from their completed orders.

2. Refunds. For a WISMO-turned-return ticket, an agent can refund a past order without switching tabs: set the quantity to refund, choose whether to refund shipping, add a reason, decide whether to restock the item, and notify the customer — all from the ticket.

3. Discount-code generation. This is the in-app cousin of the public tools. Per the Shopify Discount Code Generator docs, agents can create and send a one-time discount code straight from the message view — as a percentage off, a fixed amount off, or free shipping — with a randomly generated code name or one they type themselves. The code is stored in Shopify, so there's no copy-paste coordination between the support and marketing tools.

Together with Gorgias macros for canned responses and the Gorgias AI Agent for automation, these Shopify actions are what make the sidebar feel like a genuine ecommerce cockpit rather than a generic inbox.

Free vs in-app: a quick map

Here's the honest breakdown of what costs nothing and what needs a plan and a Shopify connection.

The pattern to notice: the public tools are free and standalone, while the in-app merchant tools are genuinely valuable but Shopify-gated — they light up only once you've connected Shopify to Gorgias, and the deeper automation sits on paid add-ons. For the full plan-and-add-on picture, see our Gorgias pricing explained breakdown.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Give Gorgias its due: for a Shopify brand, this toolset is excellent. The SKU generator does one small thing cleanly, and the in-app order actions are the reason many merchants pick Gorgias over a generic help desk in the first place. But it's worth being clear-eyed about where the tools stop.

The public SKU generator is manual and one-directional. You type each product in by hand, and it doesn't read your existing catalog, deduplicate against SKUs you already use, or sync back into Shopify — you export a file and import it yourself. It's a starter, not an inventory system.

The in-app merchant tools still require an agent to drive them. The order-refund flow is smooth, but a human has to read the ticket, decide the refund is warranted, open the sidebar, and click through it. The discount-code generator is a click, but someone has to judge that this shopper should get a code and what size it should be. These tools make the action fast; they don't make the decision for you or absorb the volume when a hundred WISMO tickets land at once.

And Gorgias's own automation, the AI Agent, is billed per resolution — roughly $0.90 per resolved interaction on annual plans and $1.00 on monthly, and by Gorgias's own billing model each AI interaction also counts as a helpdesk ticket, so a self-resolved ticket can carry both fees (Gorgias AI Agent pricing). That's a defensible model, but it means your automation cost scales with outcomes you don't fully control.

This is the seam where an AI agent layer fits. The category of AI agents for customer service exists to do the reasoning-and-action work these utilities can't. Macha is one such layer, and the Macha–Gorgias integration is live: Macha runs on top of the Gorgias you already use — it does not replace your help desk, its Shopify sidebar, or its order actions. Connect Macha to Gorgias, and it reads and writes the same tickets your agents do: triaging by intent, looking up order status through a custom tool that turns a REST API into something an agent can call, and drafting or posting the grounded reply — including the WISMO answer or the returns instruction — before a human opens the sidebar. Crucially, Macha bills per AI action, not per resolution, so the cost model doesn't hinge on a resolution definition you don't own — the pricing page has the detail.

The clean division of labour: keep Gorgias's merchant tools as the system of record for orders, refunds, and codes, and layer an agent on top for the reading, deciding, and drafting the sidebar can't do on its own.

FAQ

Is the Gorgias SKU Generator free? Yes. It's a free public tool at gorgias.com/tools/sku-generator. You enter a company email to start, generate SKUs by product type, name, and up to three attributes, and export the result as CSV or JSON. You don't need a Gorgias subscription.

Is the SKU generator inside the Gorgias app? No. It's a standalone marketing tool on the Gorgias website, separate from the ticketing product. The merchant tools that live inside Gorgias are the Shopify order actions and discount-code generator in the ticket sidebar, which require a Gorgias plan and a connected Shopify store.

Does the Gorgias SKU generator create barcodes or QR codes? No. It generates SKU text strings only, with best-practice guidance (7–20 characters, start with letters, avoid confusable characters like O/0). It doesn't produce barcodes, QR codes, or printable labels.

Can Gorgias generate Shopify discount codes automatically? Agents can generate one-time discount codes (percentage, fixed amount, or free shipping) from the ticket message view, and the code is stored in Shopify. That's a manual, agent-triggered action; deeper automation lives in the paid AI Agent, which is billed per resolution.

Can I add AI to Gorgias without replacing it? Yes. Macha connects to Gorgias as a live integration and runs on top of your existing help desk, Shopify sidebar, and merchant tools — it doesn't replace them. It helps by triaging, looking up order data, and drafting grounded replies, and it bills per AI action rather than per resolution.

Ready to layer AI onto the Gorgias merchant tools you already use? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.