Product catalog

The product catalog is the single list of everything your organization buys, stocks and sells. Quotations, sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, vendor bills and stock all refer to catalog products, so a product's price, cost, unit and tax class are set once here and reused everywhere.

Before you begin

• The Product Catalog module must be enabled. It has no other module requirements; Sales, Purchasing and Inventory require it.
• Everyone with catalog.product.read can browse products. Creating and editing products needs catalog.product.write; managing categories and units of measure needs catalog.manage. See Permissions.

Key concepts

Concept	What it means
Type	Product (a physical item) or Service. Services never track stock.
SKU	Your stock-keeping unit code. Optional for products, required for variants. Unique across all products and variants.
Variant	A version of a product, such as a size or a color, with its own SKU, price, cost and stock.
Unit of measure	How the product is counted (each, hour, kilogram…). It decides how many decimals quantities may have.
Tax class	Standard, Reduced, Zero-rated or Exempt. The Taxes module uses it to pick the rate. See Taxes.
Track inventory	Whether the product's stock is counted in Inventory. Only tracked products can be received, shipped, adjusted or transferred.

Open the catalog

Select Products in the main menu. The page has three tabs: Products, Categories and Units of measure.

The product list.

On the Products tab you can:

• Search with Search by name, SKU or barcode.
• Filter by Type (Product or Service) and Status (Active or Inactive), or build a filter on any field.
• Sort, choose columns (Purchase cost, Unit of measure, Tax class and Barcode are hidden by default), and save views.
• Import products from a spreadsheet or export them.

Products with variants show their number of variants next to the name, and inactive products are marked Inactive.

Add a product

1. On the Products tab, select New product.

2. Fill in the form:

   Field	What it is
   Name	Required.
   SKU	Optional. Spaces become dashes and letters become upper case. Letters, digits and - _ . / only.
   Type	Product or Service.
   Category	Where the product is filed.
   Unit of measure	Defaults to Each.
   Sales price	The default selling price. Price books and discounts can override it; see Pricing and discounts.
   Purchase cost	What you usually pay. Used on purchase orders and bills when the supplier has no price for the item.
   Currency	Currency of the price and cost. Defaults to your organization's currency.
   Tax class	Standard, Reduced, Zero-rated or Exempt.
   Barcode	For example an EAN or UPC code. Searchable.
   Track inventory	On by default. Always off for services.
   Active	Inactive products stay in history but are no longer offered on new lines.
   Description	Free text, shown on the product page.

3. Select Save. The product page opens.

tip

To add many products at once, use the list's import. Prepare a spreadsheet with a column per field (name, SKU, type, sales price…).

The product page

A product page with its variants, pictures, stock and suppliers.

• Header: the main picture, name, SKU, type, category, and an Inactive badge if needed. Edit and delete are on the right.
• Details: SKU, type, category, unit of measure, sales price, purchase cost, currency, tax class, barcode, track inventory and active.
• Description, if any.
• Variants (products only) and Pictures.
• Sections from other modules, for example Stock (on hand, reserved and available per location, from Inventory), Suppliers (from Purchasing), custom fields, documents and activities.

Sell a product in variants

Use variants when one product comes in several versions that you price or stock separately, such as a T-shirt in sizes and colors.

Define the options

1. Open the product. In Variants, select Edit options.
2. In Variant options, enter an Option name (for example Size) and its Values, separated by commas (for example S, M, L).
3. Select Add an option to add another (for example Color with Red, Navy). A product can have up to three options, each with up to 30 values.
4. Select Save.

Create the variants

Select Create missing variants. Modulix creates one variant for every combination of values that does not exist yet (up to 200 per product) and tells you how many it created. Each variant gets a name such as M / Navy and a SKU built from the product's SKU and the values, for example TSHIRT-M-NAVY. If the product has no SKU, one is made from its name.

To add a single variant instead, select New variant, choose a value for each option and enter its SKU.

Edit variants

Each variant has its own Name, SKU, Sales price, Purchase cost, Barcode and Active status. A variant without a sales price sells at the product's price (shown as Product's price). Open a variant with its edit button to change it.

Variants generated from an option such as color.

Good to know:

• Renaming an option or a value in Edit options renames it in the existing variants.
• You cannot add or remove an option while the product has variants. Delete the variants first.
• Stock, sales lines and purchase lines refer to the variant, so each variant has its own stock.

Add pictures

1. Open the product. In Pictures, select Add pictures.
2. Choose up to 12 images per product: PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF, up to 5 MB each.

The first picture is the main picture, shown in lists and in the page header. Use Make it the main picture on another picture to change it, or Delete picture to remove one.

info

Picture links have random names and can be opened without signing in, so they work in emails and documents. Do not upload pictures that must stay confidential.

Categories

The Categories tab lists categories with their Parent category and number of products.

• Select New category and enter a Name, an optional Parent category and a Description.
• Categories form a tree: a category can sit inside another. Two categories with the same parent cannot have the same name, and a category cannot be moved inside itself or one of its subcategories.
• Only categories without products and subcategories can be deleted.

Creating and editing categories needs catalog.manage.

Units of measure

The Units of measure tab lists units with their Symbol and Decimal places. These units are created when the module is enabled:

Unit	Symbol	Decimal places
Each	ea	0
Hour	h	2
Day	d	2
Kilogram	kg	3
Liter	L	3
Meter	m	3
Box	box	0

Decimal places (0–6) is how precise quantities can be. With 0, only whole units are accepted on stock movements and transfers (for example, 2.5 ea is refused).

Select New unit to add one (for example Pallet, plt, 0). Symbols must be unique. Units used by products cannot be deleted: make them inactive instead. An inactive unit cannot be chosen for other products.

Deactivate or delete a product

• Deactivate: select Edit and clear Active. The product stays on past documents and in stock history but is not offered on new lines.
• Delete: select the delete button. Its variants and pictures are deleted too.

warning

Products and variants used elsewhere (on quotations, orders, invoices, supplier lists, or with stock movements) cannot be deleted. Make them inactive instead.

How the catalog connects to other modules

Module	What it uses
Quotations, Sales orders, Invoicing	Name, SKU, sales price (through pricing), unit and tax class on lines.
Pricing and discounts	Price books and discounts per product or variant.
Purchase orders and Accounts payable	Purchase cost (when the supplier has no price) and tax class.
Suppliers	Which suppliers supply each product or variant.
Stock tracking	Track inventory and the unit's decimal places.

Permissions

Permission	What it allows	Granted by default to
catalog.product.read	View products and services	Admin, Member
catalog.product.write	Create and edit products, variants and pictures	Admin
catalog.product.delete	Delete products and variants	Admin
catalog.manage	Manage categories and units of measure	Admin