Furniture Product-Content Audit Checklist

A useful product-content audit should tell you why the work keeps breaking. Counting empty cells is not enough.

Use this checklist to examine the process around the catalog: ownership, structure, assets, change and distribution. For a field-by-field quality assessment, use the separate Furniture Product Data Quality Scorecard.

1. Ownership

• One person or function is accountable for the catalog as a whole.
• Product, price, copy, imagery and channel decisions each have a named owner.
• The person doing data entry knows where to send a disputed fact.
• Ownership continues after the product launches.
• Supplier contacts are recorded for missing or conflicting information.

Warning sign: every department can edit the record, but nobody can say who makes the final call.

2. Product and variant structure

• Parent products are separate from buyable variants.
• Every sellable variant has a stable internal identifier.
• Supplier and Supplier SKU are held as separate attributes where needed, rather than replacing your own SKU.
• Size, finish, fabric and orientation are structured consistently.
• Related variants can be found without relying on their names.
• Discontinued variants can be distinguished from active ones.

Warning sign: one product looks complete while several sellable configurations have no price or image.

3. Materials

• Shared fabrics and finishes are maintained as reusable records.
• Each material has a consistent code and name.
• Swatches and material properties are attached to the right record.
• The team can identify every product affected by a discontinued material.
• Product copy does not contain material claims that are absent from the source information.

Warning sign: the same fabric appears under several spellings across the catalog.

4. Assets

• Each image or document is linked to the right product, variant or material.
• Hero, cut-out, lifestyle and swatch roles are clear.
• The team can tell which asset is current.
• Rights, usage limits or expiry dates are recorded where the business needs them.
• Channel crops and sizes can be traced back to a source asset.
• Generated imagery is reviewed before use or catalog linking.

When images are created or edited through the Furniture Connect Agent, the result is automatically compared with the reference for product presence, silhouette, material and finish before it is surfaced. A person still approves, requests changes or rejects it. Studio used on its own does not run that automatic comparison.

5. Supplier intake

• There is a repeatable intake template or mapping process.
• Missing values remain visible rather than being guessed.
• Suggested header mappings are reviewed before import.
• Duplicate products and variants are checked before creation.
• Images from a supplier file can be assigned to the intended slots.
• Exceptions have an owner and deadline.

Warning sign: each supplier onboarding starts with a new spreadsheet design.

6. Destination readiness

• Each sales destination has a current requirements list.
• Base values and channel-specific values are kept distinct.
• The team knows which products or variants are blocked for each destination.
• Failed submissions come back with enough detail to fix the source.
• Published pages are checked, not just exported files.
• Changes are carried to every affected destination.

Warning sign: "ready" means the internal record is complete, regardless of where it is going.

7. Maintenance

• Price, stock and availability changes have a defined route.
• Material discontinuations trigger a check of affected products and channels.
• Deleted products and variants can be restored if removed in error.
• There is a regular review of unresolved exceptions.
• The team can see who ran an export and retrieve it later.
• Old files are not still being treated as active sources.

What to do with the results

Do not turn every unchecked box into a project.

Group the findings into three lists:

1. Stops a sale or launch now — fix first.
2. Multiplies across many products or channels — fix at the source.
3. Creates repeat work but no immediate blocker — schedule and assign it.

Then choose one owner and one next action for each item. An audit without ownership is just a more accurate description of the problem. For how to sequence the fixes, see how to prioritize product-content problems.