Adding a product
- Open Retail › Products and press New product.
- Enter the name and the selling price. The page says whether prices include VAT.
- Choose how it is sold, by the piece or by weight, its category and its VAT code. Left empty, the VAT code is its category's, or the company's usual one.
- Add the barcode on the product, or have an in-store one made for a product that has none.
- Press Add product. The SKU is given for you unless you typed one.
A barcode belongs to one product. A case with its own barcode can be added as a second code that stands for the number of pieces in it, so one scan of the case sells or receives that many.
Family and Which one tie together products that are the same thing in different forms: a size, a colour, a flavour. Each is still its own product, with its own price, stock and barcodes. Once any product has a family, the list can be narrowed to one.
Goods sold by weight
A product sold by weight is priced per unit, a kilo by default. At the till the cashier keys the weight, or scans the label your scale printed. To read scale labels, say how your scales print them under Retail setup › General, and give each weighed product the item number (PLU) the scale uses.
A shop whose scale prints no labels can print them itself. On a Registration terminal, Labels takes the weight typed from the scale and prints a label with the weight, what it comes to and a barcode in that same layout, so a till charges what the label says. It needs the layout set under Retail setup › General and an item number (PLU) on the product. No scale is wired to a till: the weight is always keyed, or read from a label.
Tare is what the tray or the bag weighs, in the product's own unit. When the cashier says a weight was read with the container on the scale, the till takes the tare off and charges for what is left.
Changing a product
Open a product from the list to change it. A change to the selling price needs the permission to manage prices and takes effect at the tills on their next sale.
A product is taken off sale with its Status: Not on sale for now, Out of season, Discontinued or Withdrawn from sale. The tills refuse to sell it and say which. A discontinued product cannot be received either. A product is never deleted, because past sales name it.
Categories groups products and can carry a VAT code its products take. Low stock only lists products at or under their reorder level.
A picture
Open a product and press Choose a picture. Any photograph will do: it is made smaller in your browser before it is sent. It shows beside the product in the list here and at the tills, which is how a cashier picks out something with no barcode. Remove takes it off. A picture can also be added on a Registration terminal.
Who supplies it
Under Suppliers, Add a supplier records what one supplier says about this product: their code for it, how they pack it, the smallest order they take, the days they take to deliver and what they charge for one, before VAT. Suppliers are the same ones as in your books. A supplier has one line for a product: Change it, or remove it from the product.
Switch Preferred supplier on for the one you usually buy it from. A product has one, and it becomes the product's default supplier. What a supplier charges and what the last delivery cost are shown, and typed, only by somebody who may see costs.
A price for one store
With more than one store in use, on an edition that includes store prices, an open product lists each store under Store prices. Type a price beside a store and press Set price to give that store its own. Empty the box and press Use the company price to put it back. A store with no price of its own charges the company price.
Switch Sold here off for a store that does not sell the product: its tills refuse it. Both need the permission to manage prices.
A price for a later date
Open a product and, under A price for a later date, enter the New price and the day it starts under From, which has to be after today. With store prices, choose whether it is the company's price or one store's. Press Set the price for that day. It is saved at once.
Until that day the product sells at its price now. On the day the new price becomes its price, and the tills charge it from their next sale. A price still waiting is listed there and is taken away with Cancel. Both need the permission to manage prices.
Batches and serial numbers
Under Stock and buying, switch Tracked by batch and expiry on for goods that go off. Each delivery is then received with its batch number or its expiry date, and stock leaves the batch that expires soonest first. Shelf life in days gives a delivery its expiry date when nobody enters one. The switch is there on the Organizational and Enterprise editions.
Switch Each unit has a serial number on for goods sold one at a time and followed by their number. It is for a counted product sold by the piece, on the Enterprise edition, and is switched on while the product has no stock on record: bring the stock to zero first, then receive it again with its numbers. See Batches and serial numbers.
Products out to a file, and in from one
Export downloads every product as a file a spreadsheet opens. It needs the permission to export Retail data, and each download is written to the Audit Trail.
Import reads that file back after you have edited it — or an export from another till or shop system: Square, Shopify, Loyverse, Lightspeed, Odoo or a spreadsheet of your own.
- Press Import and drop the file in (CSV or Excel).
- What each column is: check what each column was matched to. A column per store — In stock [Downtown], Current Quantity Main St — is read as that store's opening stock. Press Next: check and answer.
- Answer the Questions: which store a name in the file is, which VAT code a tax name is. Leave Add categories that do not exist yet ticked to have them made.
- Read Every row: added, changed, no change, or refused with the reason. Nothing has changed yet.
- Tick what Before it goes in asks and press Apply. Each row stands alone: a refused row is listed with its reason and the rest go in.
A row whose SKU or barcode matches a product changes that product, as Items already in Accmerio says: fill in what is missing, replace, or leave it. Any other row adds a product, and needs a name. A product left out of the file is not touched. A variant (Large, 500 g) stays a variant of its product's family. A barcode another product already has, or one whose check digit is wrong, is left out with a warning. A price that differs from a product's own is taken only from somebody who may manage prices; for anybody else the price is kept and the row says so. A file holds up to 20,000 rows and 25 MB.
A product registered twice
- Open the product you want to keep.
- Press This is the same product as… and choose the other one.
- Press Merge into this product.
The other one's barcodes and stock move to the product you kept, and the other is discontinued and says which product it was merged into. Nothing recorded against it is rewritten: its sales and its receipts stay its own, and the stock movements show the move. The two must be sold the same way and in the same unit, and the other must not be below zero on record. It needs the permissions to manage products and to adjust stock.
What reaches the books
Nothing. A product is a record; the books change when goods are received, sold, adjusted or written off. Merging two products moves stock from one to the other at the same value, so the inventory account does not change.