Add your first product

A product record is the foundation for every stock figure, purchase order and report. Until a product exists, there is nothing to receive, count or value.

Create a product

1. Open Catalog in the main menu, then View Products. The page is headed Products.
2. Select Add new at the top right. On a narrow screen, the button shows only a plus icon. The Add new product form opens.
3. Fill in the five fields marked with a red asterisk: Product name, Product code, Supplier, Category and Unit.
4. Fill in anything else you already know. Every other field has a working default and can be changed later.
5. Select Save. A confirmation appears, and the new product flashes at the top of the product list.

Required fields and product details

The five starred fields are required; you cannot save a product without them. Supplier is required even when Procurement is set to Manufactured, so choose a supplier for made items too.

Category and Unit are chosen from lists your organisation maintains in Settings, under Categories and Units. If either list is empty, you cannot finish the form. Those two Settings pages need permissions of their own (Add / Edit Category and Manage Units of Measure), so you may need someone else to add the entry.

Product code is your own reference for the item, such as a SKU or part number. Type it exactly as you want to see it in lists and on paperwork. Nothing you enter is locked in: you can edit every field later, including the product code.

Subcategory is optional and only offers entries belonging to the category you picked. If the category has none, the list says so. If you change the category afterwards, the subcategory is cleared and you must choose again.

Inventory and shelf tracking

Count/Show in inventory sits below the price fields and is switched on for a new product. Leave it on for anything you hold stock of.

Just below Count/Show in inventory is Track shelf positions. Use it for products whose stock you want to record shelf by shelf inside each warehouse. It can only be switched on once the product has been saved.

Shelves are included in the Starter plan and above. On Free, the switch shows a lock. See Shelf positions: tracking a product by shelf.

Default values

The switch beside Primary Product Info reads Active for a new product. Price currency is pre-set to your organisation's default currency if one has been set, and Unit Price starts at zero.

Under Stock levels, Expected Lead Time starts at 30 days, Reorder Cover Days starts at 30, and the automatic safety stock calculation is off.

Add a product image

A product image can only be added after the product exists. While you are creating it, the image button is greyed out and the form tells you to save first.

1. Save the product.
2. Open the product again to edit it.
3. Upload an image file of 5MB or less.

Assign departments

Cancel takes you back to the form with everything you typed. To keep the product without changing the supplier, cancel, clear Departments in the form and save again.

Permissions, product limits and barcode errors

Creating and editing products requires the Add / Edit / Delete Products permission. Without it, the Add new button is not shown at all.

Your plan sets how many products the organisation can have. When the limit is reached, Add new is greyed out and the Products page shows Product limit reached, saying what your plan includes. The owner sees Compare plans and Upgrade to followed by the next plan's name; everyone else is asked to have the organisation's owner change the plan.

If Save does not go through, check the barcode fields. A value typed into EAN-13, UPC-A or Barcode must be a valid code of that type. The field shows a format message as you type, and saving anyway is refused with an error about the format.

Other ways to add products

On the dashboard, the Getting started step Add your products opens the same form. If your products are already in a spreadsheet, Import from a file adds them in one go. See Import products and suppliers from a CSV file.

To add several products for one supplier, start from that supplier's own page instead. The supplier is filled in for you and cannot be changed by accident.