Introduction to Products

This tutorial is about products - aka the things you make to sell to your customers. If you have connected to an e-commerce integration, you'll notice that most of the work has been done for you. However, it's still a good idea to be aware of how products fit into the system so you can adapt them to match the way you want to track your stock.

We'll Cover:

This tutorial should take approximately 35 minutes to complete.

What are Products?

A Product is any item that you sell directly to a customer. In Craftybase, we group together all your variations, expenses, orders, and manufacturers for each of the products that you sell. In this way, you can see at a glance the amount you have sold, manufactured, and currently have in stock.

Products can either be imported via one of our available e-commerce integrations, be imported in bulk via spreadsheet or individually manually created.


Importing from an e-commerce integration

Craftybase offers the ability to connect and download your products from a number of e-commerce platforms, including Etsy, Shopify, Square, and PayPal. If you don't use these integrations or have other products you wish to enter that are not available on your integration, then you'll want to work through this tutorial, where we will be creating the products manually.

As part of the welcome setup process, you would have been given the opportunity to connect your Integrations. If you skipped this step, you can connect your Integration at any time on your account settings pages. Once you have integrated with your e-commerce platform, you can then request a manual import of data from a date of your choosing. This will create products on your behalf for all matching products found in the Integration.

Your imported product names will be sent directly from the title of your imported product. You can change your product name to represent the product better if you wish - this will not affect any linkage between your external product and craftybase.

Depending on how you have structured your product listings on your Integrations, you may find that after your first import, you wish to restructure the imported products to suit your manufacturing workflow better. You can merge together products within Craftybase - this retains the linkages of all merged products so that future sales and expenses will be associated correctly. Merging is also great for situations where you have multiple Integrations and wish to combine the listings on each integration to represent a single product on Craftybase.


Adding Products Manually

While importing your products from your integration or via CSV file are the quickest and easiest ways to add your Products to Craftybase, you can also add a product to Craftybase manually using the steps below:

1. Click on the Products tab to get to your Products List:

2. From here, click on the button that appears in the top right-hand corner of the page.

3. Now, you should be on the Add Product page.

Let's take a closer look at the fields and options located on this form:

3a. The first field on the form is NAME for the Name of your product. This is the title of the product that you'd like to use for your inventory tracking purposes.

3b. Next is your SKU field. If you use stock-keeping codes to identify your products, this is where they should go. Codes are fully searchable in the system, so they can be a quick way of finding your products without needing to type the full name.

3c. Next is the IMAGE field, which allows you to upload an image that represents the product. This is optional, but it can be a good way of quickly identifying your product in your lists. It is also displayed on your invoice view, so if you intend to use this feature, then you may wish to consider uploading images.

Sales Information

4. The next section is for defining sales-related information about your product.

4a. The first field in this set is your AUTO MANUFACTURE configuration. If you'd like a manufacture to be created automatically each time an order is imported/added to Craftybase, then you'll want to tick this box. (More information about Auto Manufactures can be found here: How does the Auto Manufacture feature work?)

4b. The LOW STOCK LIMIT textbox allows you to define the minimum quantity of this product that should be in stock before it is marked with a stock status of "low stock." You don't need to use this feature if this isn't important to you, but it can be a good tool for being aware of the stock you are running low on before you run out completely.

I set my "Lavender Soap" product to have a low stock limit of 6. When my stock level reaches 6, then this product will be marked in my list as "Low Stock" so that I can see at a glance that I need to make more of this product.

4c. The last field in this section is your DEFAULT SALE PRICE. This is mainly for setting the default price for any manual orders that you create for this product, but it can be useful when viewing your Pricing Guidance, as it will show you your current profit and markup for this price.

Starting Adjustment

5. If you are moving from another inventory system, you can "bring forward" your unit price and stock level and then work forward from the date you moved across. Alternatively, to backdate everything since you started your business, leave all fields in this section as zero and then add your past orders and manufactures to bring your stock up to current levels.

5a. The STARTING QUANTITY textbox will be recorded as a Starting Adjustment for the product and will be set as your current stock on hand for this Product. Any Manufactures or Orders you add after this point will increase and decrease this number accordingly. The Material Unit Cost field is for setting the material value of any stock you are bringing into the system without accounting for them via orders or manufactures. Do not include internal labor costs or overheads here.

If setting up the inventory, please note that you'll need to ensure that these are accurate costs, as all rolling calculations going forward will include the information you provide here. We strongly advise reading our Quickstart eBook before setting any starting adjustments to ensure that you are not double-valuing your stock.

Additional Details

6. This section of the form is hidden away by default to speed up data entry in cases where you may not wish to add these details right now. To open the section, click anywhere on the heading, and fields will appear below it.

6a. CATEGORY is for your use to segment or classify your product. It is optional, and you can set this later via the edit product form if you wish. You can either select from your list of existing categories or alternatively add a new category by simply typing it in the textbox.

6b. Next field is the DESCRIPTION field, which you can use to note anything about the product that you wish. These notes are not displayed on invoices, so this is a field for your use only.

6c. The STATE selection box has three available options: Active, Draft, and Archived.

"Active" is the default setting for a product and is the one you should choose if you wish to add this product to your product list. If this is a product you aren't ready to sell quite yet, you can set this as "Draft" to separate it from the rest of your products. This can be a good option to use when working on new prototype products.

"Archived" is for products that you have previously sold and no longer make - marking a product as Archived removes it from most views and searches around Craftybase, although it can still be found via a filter search on your products page.

6d. The MEASUREMENT TYPE field is used to determine the unit of measurement you wish to use for this product. For many products, you may just wish to leave this as the default item, but for others, you may wish to be more descriptive (e.g. jar, bar, scarf, bracelet, roll, basket).

The measurement type field is not for tracking the quantity itself, as this is managed in a different way, which we will cover shortly.

6e. Your SALE QUANTITY field is for defining how many items Craftybase should decrease your inventory by each time you register a new sale of this product.

I sell "Lavender Soap" as a pack of 3 bars so I would set my sales quantity to 3. When I add/import a new order for this product, the stock on hand for this product will be automatically reduced by three each time.

Once happy with the information you have added to the product form, click the button to submit the details. Once saved, you'll be taken to your product page.


Have some questions?

If you have any additional questions, please get in touch, and we'll be happy to help.

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