Documentation/ Master records and catalogues/ The product master
The product master
The product master is the account's central item catalogue. It is the list document lines are matched against, and the purchasing figures by item, family and raw material all come out of it.
Database › Product master
On this page
What you can do here
The screen sums itself up: this is the central item catalogue, where you create and edit products, search and filter by description, family and raw material, assign categories to several at once, merge duplicates into one master product, delete the ones you have ticked and export the list to Excel.
| Action | What it does | Needs a selection |
|---|---|---|
| New | Creates a product by hand. | No |
| Merge | Joins several duplicate products into one. | Yes, at least two |
| Assign category | Changes family, raw material, cost centre or brand on everything ticked. | Yes |
| Delete selected | Takes the ticked products out of use. | Yes |
| Export to Excel | Downloads the list with every field. | No, but it honours one |
The columns
| Column | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Description | The item's name. It is the field it gets recognised by on the lines. |
| Supplier code | The reference the supplier identifies it by on their documents. |
| ERP reference code | The code it exists under in your management system. |
| Family | First-level classification. |
| Raw material | Second level, hanging off a family. |
| VAT rate | The item's tax rate. The document line inherits it from here. |
| Supplier unit | The unit the supplier invoices in. |
| Unit you want | The unit you want to handle it in. |
| Converter | The factor that gets from one unit to the other. |
The columns can be sorted and filtered one at a time from their own header, with a text filter that matches on part of what you type.
Searching and filtering
There are three controls above the list, and they combine:
- The search box, which searches on description, name or code. It is the quick way in when you know what the item is called.
- A family filter, for working on a whole group.
- A raw material filter, for going one level down.
A button clears every filter at once. Worth using before you decide a product does not exist: a forgotten filter is the commonest reason something "is not there".
The selection decides
Three of the five actions work on the rows you tick, and a fourth changes behaviour depending on whether anything is ticked:
| With products ticked | With nothing ticked |
|---|---|
| Export downloads only those products. | It exports everything that matches the search you have on. |
| Assign category acts on them. | The action does nothing. |
| Merge takes them as its candidates. | The button stays greyed out. |
Deleting products
Before deleting anything, the application asks and tells you something important: existing document lines are not affected.
It is a soft delete. The product stops being offered when you assign items, but documents already processed keep their lines and their amounts. Deleting a product does not change your history.
If the operation cannot be finished completely, the message says so with numbers: how many were deleted and how many failed. The ones that failed stay on the list.
Where the products come from
Most of them are not created: they appear. When a document arrives with a line whose item did not exist, the system creates the record from what the document carries, the description, the supplier code, the unit. The other fields stay empty until somebody fills them in.
Hence the two usual maintenance jobs: giving new products categories, so they turn up in reports, and merging the ones that have come in twice under different descriptions.
Things that come up
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A product that existed is not there | There is a family or raw material filter on. | Clear the filters and search again. |
| The same item appears twice | It arrived with two different descriptions on different documents. | Merge them, choosing which is the master. |
| Reports by family come out incomplete | Some products have no category. | Filter on an empty family and assign in bulk. |
| The Merge button is off | Fewer than two products are ticked. | Tick at least two. |
| A product was deleted by mistake | The delete does not touch the documents, but the product stops being offered. | Create it again with the same details from New. |