11. Managing Your Products

11.1 Creating Products

Now that you’ve got your store setup and your preferences set, you’ll want to create your products. To do so, open the Manager Window and select Products. On the top of this screen, you will see a listing of any products that are already setup. The bottom of this screen will display information for a product if it was highlighted on the top. There are four tabs and you can select each to review or make changes. To create a new product select New Product. This will bring up the New Product window. The first thing to do here is to provide a name for the product. Once you have named the product, the next box asks you to assign a unique code to the product. You can have duplicate names, but each product must have a unique code. If you attempt to assign a code to a product and that code has already been used, the system will prevent you from continuing. The next steps are to enter the price of the product and default cost. When you enter the selling price, be sure to enter the price excluding any applicable taxes. The cost that you enter will be used to calculate margins. That calculation will be based on what cost matching method you chose when setting up the store. The last option on this screen is a check-box that lets the system know if there is physical stock on that product. If you intend to track stock on this product, be sure to check the box, otherwise, be sure the box is unchecked. If the product is intended to be a stock item but this option is left unchecked, you cannot go back and edit this at a later time. Instead, the product will need to be deleted and recreated. Checkout will not allow you to sell a stocked Product if there is no stock available.

11.2 Editing Products

Since things are always-evolving in a business, you are not going to be limited to your initial setup of products. You can always go back and update information if necessary. Below is a breakdown of the product information screen and what can be changed and how it will affect your store.

11.2.1 General Setup

Once you have created a product, if you highlight it on the list on the top, the bottom of the page will offer you the option to edit the settings for that product. This portion of the screen is broken up into four tabs.

The first tab is General. The first thing you can edit is the name of the product. The product's name will appear on the sale/order/quote entry screen and also print on the thermal receipt. Next is the product's barcode. Each product is not required to have a barcode, but it does speed the adding of products to a sale/order/quote. After selecting any field on this tab, you'll see a scanner icon appear in the barcode field. If you scan a barcode, it will automatically be populated into the barcode field. If a product field has not been selected, the barcode icon will appear in the product search field. If you need to edit a product's code, you can select the pencil next to the code. Below that, you have the option to select a brand for the product. You can type in a new brand or select a brand that exists on another product. The next option is Type which allows you to group your products by a particular category such as bicycles. The next option is a check-box to denote if the product has a serial number. If the box is checked, upon adding this product to a sale or order, you will be required to enter a serial number for that product either by scanning in the serial number with a barcode scanner or manually keying in the serial number. These serial numbers will be recorded on the orders and invoices, and can be searched for in the order or invoice search box. Next to this box is a check-box for Sell Stop. If this box is checked, it will remove the product from the product list in the main store view. The Description is the last field, which will appear at the bottom of the product list in the main store view, when the product is selected, and optionally when the Invoice is printed.

The next tab is Pricing. When you edit the Retail price, the price including tax will automatically be updated based upon the taxes that are selected on this tab. If you'd like to set the price including tax, you can enter that and Checkout will automatically back calculate the price excluding tax (based upon the tax rates selected). You can change the default cost. This cost will be used as the default when you create a new Purchase Order in the Stock Room. In the Taxes pane, you can change the taxes that apply to this product.

The Stock tab's fields can only be edited for products which Checkout is tracking stock levels for. Quantity shows how many pieces of this product you currently have in stock. To the right of that is a pencil. If you click on that pencil, the Stock Correction window will appear. Here, you can edit the amount of stock you have on hand by entering the difference between what you have on hand now and what the store shows as having on hand. The system makes this easy with a before and after number so there are no mistakes. You cannot put stock in the negative in this window. Below that is a window to enter the reason for the stock correction (required). This reason, along with the employee who recorded the correction, is saved in the Ledger. Next is the number that is On Sales Orders and Allocated. The amount On Sales Orders will include the quantity that has been Allocated. To the right you will see Minimum, Needed and Available. Available is Quantity minus Allocated. The Minimum is the count of a product you wish to be in stock at any time. Needed is Minimum minus Available and will show as negative if there is sufficient stock. Below that is In-Store Reserve, Quantity Web Store, Minimum and Maximum which is used for controlling how stock is managed with a Web Store. In-store Reserve is used to allocate stock for in store sales and will not be sold on the Web Store. The Quantity Web Store is Available minus In-Store Reserve and rounded down to the nearest whole number. Minimum is used as a threshold to identify when a product should no longer be sold in the Web Store. If Quantity Web Store is below the Minimum, the product will be taken down from the Web Store on the next Sync. When products are restocked and the Quantity Web Store is equal to or greater than the Web Store Minimum, the product is re-uploaded on the next Sync. Maximum is used to set the highest quantity that should be synced to the Web Store. If your Available minus In-Store Reserve is greater than the Web Store Maximum, only the Maximum number will be displayed and uploaded as the Web Store Quantity. To the right, you can select the primary supplier(s) for this product. Selecting a supplier as being primary will not prevent you from creating a Purchase Order for another Supplier, and adding this product to it.

Note that the stock correction tool is intended for corrections (e.g., lost, found or damaged products) and not to receive products into your store as it will affect your Shrinkage and Spoilage account. This is especially important if you are using the Ledger to export your financial data. For more information on receiving stock, please see Chapter 24: Managing Your Stock Room.

The Web Store tab allows you to select whether this Product will be available for sale in your Web Store, enter tags for it, indicate if the product is shippable, set it's shipping weight, and add images. When a product is marked to be uploaded to Web Store and the sell stop flag is enabled, an image will appear indicating the product will not be uploaded. To enter Tags, click into Tags, type in a tag and then hit the spacebar on your keyboard to enter additional tags. If you need to edit a tag, select it and then start to type the replacement tag. To delete a tag, select it and then hit Delete on your keyboard while it is highlighted. Details on how tags are used with a Web Store can be found in the Shopify Documentation.

You can optionally add multiple product images to each Product. To add an image, drag the image file into one of the image boxes. To delete an image, place your mouse over it and click on the “X” that is displayed over the image. You can add JPG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, PDF, ESP, GIF and TIFF formats with a maximum file size of 1MB or image size 800 x 800. Images larger than the maximum will automatically be converted on the fly to an acceptable format and size. Animated GIF’s can be added and will be displayed online properly. The weight will uploaded to your Web Store and used when calculating shipping.

11.2.2 Working with Variations

If you are working with products where multiple variations of the same primary product will be sold, you can easily create and manage these in Checkout. Examples of variations are a T-shirt which you sell in multiple sizes (such as S, M, L, and XL) and colors (such as black, red, and white), or a coffee mug sold only in multiple sizes (small, medium, grande).

The primary product must first be created and can not have a quantity of stock. You can optionally create this primary product as a stockless product, but as you'll see, key fields from this product will automatically be added to the variations that Checkout will create (such as Suppliers, Minimum and whether the product has physical stock).

After selecting the primary product, select Create Variations, and then select Setup Properties (when the Variations window is displayed). When the Properties window is displayed, you'll see a list of the standard Templates that are included in Checkout (Colors, T-shirt Sizes, DVD Regions, Book Cover, Genre, and Gender) and any custom ones that you've created (listed under Properties). To apply one of these to your Product, you first need to select it and then click on “Use this template”. The Template will now be listed under Properties and you can rename it by keying over its Name, and also give it a Description. As you will see below, you can add, change or remove any of these codes to suit this Product's characteristics. As an example, if you select T-shirt Sizes, you can remove XXS and XXXL if you do not sell those sizes.

To create a new property, click on the plus (+) sign under Properties and Templates (bottom left corner of the window). This will create a new property named “Untitled”. You can change the name and description by keying over over both fields. Once these fields are set, you are ready to create the characteristics of this property. To create new characteristics, click on the plus (+) sign under Code and Description (bottom right corner of the window). This will create a new code named “Untitled”. When you tab from Code to Description, the Description will automatically default to be the code, but you can key over it to change it. If you need to delete a Code, you can select it and click the (-) sign.

You are now ready to create the particular template sequence and characteristics that will apply to this product. First click on Select and choose the first template to be applied. When you select it, its characteristics will be displayed below it, and you can place a check mark in the ones to be applied. After selecting them you can optionally select another template. To select an additional template, click on the green plus (+) just to the right of the characteristic list. You will once again click on the newly displayed Select and you can choose the next template and its characteristics. If you have three or more templates to apply and are not using Shopify for a Web Store, you can repeat the process of selecting additional templates and the characteristics which apply. You can now select Create Variations and matching Products will automatically be created. As an example, if you select the T-shirt Sizes template and Small, Medium, and Large and then Colors and select both Red and Black, Checkout will create "Small, Red", "Small, Black", "Medium, Red", "Medium, Black", "Large, Red" and "Large, Black" variations of the primary product.

11.2.3 Editing Multiple Products at the Same Time

If you select multiple Products, you will be able to edit them at the same time. After selecting them, edit the field to be changed and then tab away from it or select another field to update all of the products. If you select stocked and stockless products, fields that do not apply to both types of products, such as minimum will not be available to be changed.

11.2.4 How Checkout Deals with Changed Product Information

If a product's name or price is changed, Checkout will not update any orders, quotes, or invoices containing those products.

11.2.5 Importing Products

If you have a large product list and would like to import them in bulk, you can do so by having them in a file with a comma separated (CSV extension) or tab delimited (TXT or TSV extension) format. Generally tab delimited files are cleaner in case there are commas embedded in any product fields. If you are working with an Excel spreadsheet, you can save it as a tab delimited file before importing it into Checkout. It is always highly recommended that you backup your store immediately before importing. You can also test your import by importing into the Example Store first.

When importing products, they are matched by product code and you can select how duplicates are handled. They can be updated (Update product info), skipped (Are not imported), or have a new Product be created with a ‘2’ appended to its code (Get a modified code). To be imported, each product record must have at least a product code and a product name in the text file. To begin the import process, go to the File menu within Checkout and select Import Products (Manager login required). You will be prompted to select the file you wish to import your products from. When you have selected that file, click the Open button. If the import file contains a header row, Checkout will automatically attempt to match the import fields with the header row fields. When no header row is found or Checkout cannot match the fields automatically, use the drop-down lists to match the import fields one-by-one. For the fields labeled Has Stock, Needs Serial and Sell Stop, you can select either ‘True for All’ or ‘False for All’ or select a preexisting field containing true and false values. When you have completed the field matching, you can use the VCR buttons to review the Preview of the import. If the first record in the text file is the header record, you should select Do not import this product when viewing the first record. When each field has been matched, you have the option to import stock and apply default taxes. If you select the import stock levels option, any imported stock will show as received from an unnamed supplier in the Stock Room. When you are ready to continue, select the Import button at the bottom-right corner of the window. A progress bar will show the status of the import. When the import is complete, a pop-up message will appear showing how many products were imported successfully.

11.2.6 Product Action Button

The action button on the product screen offers several options. The first is to delete the selected product. If the product exists on an Order or Quote, you will not be able to delete it until it has been removed from those orders and quotes. If you select multiple products, you can delete them just as easily. If you delete a product that has a quantity, a Stock Correction will post to the Ledger to reflect any Inventory value change.

Next you can show or create variations, make a stock correction, or change a product's code. The option to import products is also available here and the option to export all or selected products. The last option is to print labels. For more detailed information on label printing, please see Chapter 23: Daily Usage - Printing Labels.

11.2.7 Exporting Products

You have the option of exporting selected products or all products, as was mentioned above, from the product action button or all products by selecting Export Products from the File menu. When you export products, you select the format of the file to be created. You can choose Excel, Numbers, comma separated, or tab delimited.