The Product card is where all of the information about the Product is kept, including costing and pricing, inventory levels, categorizations, tax exemptions, and much more. It is important to properly define a Product's properties before the Product is added to your documents, because these properties become "fused" to the document when the Product is added. In other words, changing a Product to "serialized" after the Product has been added to a Quote, Invoice, or PO does not automatically update that property on the document, and in fact can cause you considerable work "untangling" documents after principal Product properties have been modified "mid-stream".
If you must change one of these major properties, and you want the updated version of the Product info to appear on the document, you must first remove the old version of the Product from the document, and then re-add the updated version, even if the changes were made to the same Product card.
For more information on the Options, Web, Inventory, and GL tabs, or the Supplier Costs grid, please see the appropriate articles.
The Product Code is the code that is used to identify the Product in the system. It should be short (under 12 characters) and may be the same code used to identify the Product by its manufacturer, or a compound of different characteristics of the Product. It is recommended that you are able to surmise some basic information about the Product from its Produce Code.
The Product Code of the iPod Touch is M2334LL/A. It is possible to identify this as an Apple product because all Apple manufacturer's part numbers begin with the letter M.
The Product's Description is the longer text description of the Product that may describe the item’s attributes in detail. LightSpeed supports the printing of long, multi-line descriptions on sales documents. This description is searchable in the POS screen and will appear on printed documents.
Family and Class
The Family is one of two general classifications for a Product, along with Class. It is recommended that the brand or manufacturer of the Product is used for Family, and a general categorization such as "speakers" or "tshirts" is used for Class, but this is not a requirement. In fact, you may choose to use an entirely different set of values for the Family and Class categorizations.
Having appropriate Classes and Families entered for Products will help you when reporting on your sales and inventory in the Reporting or Intelligence tools, for doing batch pricing markups using Set Selling Prices or Set Product Info, in complex Smart Find searches, or just doing simple searches in the Browser. For assistance, contact Xsilva’s support department.
The values for your Family or Class list can be added or deleted in Tools > Setup > Families/Classes. See the Configuration I article for more information.
UPC
The UPC Code is the unique, universal 12 digit number that is printed as a barcode on a Product’s box and is used to identify the Product when its barcode is scanned. The number can be read below the UPC barcode on the box of the Product.
You can scan in the UPC barcode of the Product anyplace in LightSpeed where you’re searching for a Product. This UPC can be added directly in the Product profile, or in the Receiving tab of a Purchase Order.
If you are a computer shop, you may want to set up Classes like ‘Hardware’, ‘Software’ and ‘Service Labour’. When you run a report you may filter the report by Class to see the results for only one of your Classes, so that you can compare the results with that of another Class to get an overview of their performance.
Tax Status
Tax Statuses can be set up in the Taxes setup panel and applied to individual Products. A Tax Status may be set up to exempt an individual Product from certain taxes that are applied to all other Products on a document.
Labour may always be exempt from a particular tax. A Tax Status called ‘Labour Tax Exemption’ can be set up in the Taxes setup panel and chosen on the Product window of a Product that is labour.
Size and Color
These fields allow you to select the size and color for this Product from the pre-configured list customizable in the Size and Color setup panels. For more info, see the Clothing Workflows article in the Sales & Workflows section of the User Guide.
Photo
LightSpeed can store 512x512 pixel photos of your Products. Drag a .jpg or .png file to the Photo drawer, opened by clicking the Photo button, and the photo will be scaled and saved to the database. To remove the photo, click the ‘X’ button. Clicking the image area will also activate your iSight camera – click the space bar to take a photo, and click Save or Cancel when asked. Images may also be dragged directly from a web page.
Photos can be printed on sales documents such as Quotes and Invoices by checking the Print Images option in the Options tab of the document, and re-used on the LightSpeed Web Store. This image will also appear in the POS screen in the Product detail section, and this will also be the image uploaded to your Web Store.
Multiple Product images can be added to a Product that will also display in the Web Store. To add additional images to a Product, open the image drawer and click New. Drag the image into the drawer as described above. Each Product may have up to 5 images.
Inventoried
Inventoried indicates whether you keep inventory numbers for the Product. A Product like an iPod would be inventoried, but a Product set up as a service, such as a technician’s labour, would not be inventoried, even though the hours would be tracked on the sales document (two hours of labour for example).
Be sure when creating a Product to set this option properly, as checking it later on, after the Product has been added to various sales documents, can cause disruptions to some features.
Serialized
Serialized indicates whether the Product will have associated Serial Numbers. A Product like an iPod or a 10-speed bicycle will generally have a unique Serial Number for each unit, but an item like an iPod Armband or a pair of earrings will not. Check this option only if you plan to record the Serial Numbers when receiving and invoicing the Product.
Current
Current indicates whether the Product is currently available for ordering or sale. You may want to uncheck Current on Products that can no longer be ordered from any Supplier because they have been discontinued. In the Company setup panel, you can specify whether only Current Products are searchable in the Browser, the POS, and in documents. If a non-current Product has inventory, it will appear in searches until the inventory level is zero for the Product.
Editable Description
This option allows Users to edit the Product’s description on a sales document. You may want some Products to have editable description, particularly if it is a custom or build-to-order Product. This box is checked by default when a new Product is created.
Editable Selling Price
This option allows Users to edit the Product’s Selling Price on a sales document. You may want some Products to have editable Selling Prices, particularly if it is a custom or build-to-order Product. If this option is not checked, a User with appropriate Privileges can only modify the Selling Price through discounting.
Gift Card
Checking this attribute will indicate to LightSpeed that this Product is a gift card, and is subject to certain statuses, such as non-inventoried, and non-taxed. When Gift Cards are sold, they are serialized. See the articloe on Gift Cards in the Sales & Workflows section for more information.
Cost Always Equals Sell
Products with this checkbox selected will have a Cost equaling the Selling Price on sales documents, useful for selling Products without registering changes to your profit margins.
Size-Color Matrix
If you sell Products that differ only in size or color, you are able to use this feature to create a large number of multiple Products easily. When you check the Size-Color Matrix checkbox, a grid will appear which allows you to enter various sizes and colors for the Product. Clicking Save will create checkboxes for each combination. Check the boxes for which you wish to create new Products, and click Create Products. New Products will now be added to the Product database, duplicating all the Product info from the original Product, and each will have a unique Product Code and description. Formatting for these changes can be done using the pull-down menus below the matrix.
For more info, see the Clothing Workflows article in the Sales & Workflows section of the User Guide.
