Add your first products

You can sell with three products or three thousand. Start with the ones that move.

Categories first#

Make a handful of categories before you make products — Drinks, Snacks, Household. They decide how the till is laid out and how your reports group, and reorganising later is more work than deciding now. Do not overthink it: five to fifteen is normal for a small shop.

Add a product#

Each product needs a name and a selling price. Everything else is optional but useful:

• Barcode. Scan it into the field rather than typing it. The scanner types it for you.
• Cost price. Without it, margin reports have nothing to work from.
• Category. Where it appears on the till.
• Retail price. If you sometimes sell below a list price, record the list price here and the difference is tracked as a discount rather than quietly vanishing from your margin.

Opening stock#

Adding a product does not give you any of it. Stock arrives one of three ways:

1. A purchase — the proper route, because it records what you paid. See Purchases and suppliers.
2. An import — bulk opening stock from a spreadsheet. See Import from a spreadsheet.
3. A stock count — count what is on the shelf and record it. See Stock counts.

Products sold by weight#

If you sell loose goods, set the product to sell by weight and connect a scale — see Weighing scales. The scale prints a label carrying the weight and price, and the till reads both from it rather than asking anyone to key them in.

A faster way for large lists#

Typing in a thousand products is a bad use of a week. Import them from a spreadsheet instead — products, opening stock, and suppliers can all come in at once.