Building your catalogue

Everything at the checkout comes from the catalogue, so it is worth getting right early. Open Products from the home screen. Products edits the item card; Stock is for on-hand levels, activity, and adjustments — keep both screens rather than folding inventory into the catalogue list.

Large catalogues use the same pattern as Customers & suppliers: search (name, SKU, unit barcodes), category / status / type filters, sort (display order, name, best sellers, stock), and paged rows (25 / 50 / 100) so the grid does not load every item at once.

Start with categories

Categories are what the Visual checkout layout shows as the horizontal buttons above the product grid, so they are not just filing — they are the shape of your till. The strip appears only when at least one product is assigned to a category; empty categories stay hidden. Each button keeps the colour you picked. The category you opened stays highlighted; opening a leaf does not leave the strip empty. After you open a category, Home returns to the top and Back goes up one level. Left and right arrows appear only when there are more categories than fit.

Open Categories on the Products screen. The list on the left is a tree — parents can be collapsed or expanded, and Expand all / Collapse all sit above the list. Add or edit on the right — name, parent, colour and an optional photo. Click a row to edit it, or the folder button to add a child underneath.

Categories nest, so you can have Drinks → Cold drinks → Cans if you need that depth. Items on the till shows that nesting as a tree on the left. Most shops are better off with one level and around six to twelve categories, because that is what a cashier can tap without paging.

Adding a product

Click Add. The form is a single compact screen: photo, name, SKU, selling price, cost, opening quantity, category and tax, then the unit grid and Save. The SKU starts as the next number. Change it if the item already has a code. SKU is also the barcode of the base unit, so you type or scan once. Extra units of measure sit in the grid underneath; only those extra rows need their own barcode.

The image control is a square preview. Click the square to choose or replace the picture; once selected, the picture fills the button so you can confirm it before saving.

If you save with name or SKU empty, a short note appears on that field and the cursor moves there.

• Name — what the cashier sees and what prints on the receipt.
• Price — the selling price before VAT. Tick Price includes VAT to type the shelf price instead; the form stores the amount before VAT. A new item starts on 15% in Saudi Arabia and 10% in Bahrain. Tap the price box and a number keyboard sits at the bottom of the screen and types into that box. The same keyboard is used for display order.
• Category — where it appears in the Visual layout. On the till, Visual tiles inside a category put items already on this ticket first, then how often they appear on completed tickets (then quantity). This Products list stays A–Z so you can find a name to edit.
• Tax rate — picked from the VAT rates on this till. Setup creates 15% and 0% for Saudi Arabia, or 10% and 0% for Bahrain. A later update does not change rates you already have.
• Cost — what you paid per base unit. You can type it only while adding the item. Later changes go through a stock adjustment for that item.
• Opening qty — on-hand quantity when you first add the item, dated on the inventory opening date from setup. You can type it only on a new item. Later quantity or cost changes use a stock adjustment.
• Image — shown centred on the compact square product tile in the Visual layout. Optional, but a photo is much faster to hit than a word. A quantity badge on the tile shows how many are already on the ticket.

SKUs and barcodes

The SKU is what you scan or type for a single piece. A new product is given the next number, and you can replace it with your own code before you save. Extra pack sizes (box, carton) get their own barcode on the unit grid. At the checkout, scanning any of those codes finds the product. Saving a product keeps that unit, so a bill already on the till can still be paid.

If you sell something with no printed barcode, the SKU can be a short code you type — BAG for a carrier bag, say.

Printing barcode labels

From Products, choose Print barcodes. The dialog lists the items in the current search and filters. Each pack size with its own barcode is its own row. Tick the ones you want, set how many copies (up to 99), then Print or Save as PDF. The barcode icon on a product row opens the same dialog with that item already ticked.

The label shows the name, the selling price, and a scannable code. A 12- or 13-digit code prints as EAN-13. Any other SKU, including a short code such as BAG, prints as Code 128.

Settings → Printing chooses the label printer and the size:

• Receipt roll — one shelf label per page on the 58 mm or 80 mm receipt printer. If receipt paper is set to A4, this prints a sheet instead.
• 40×30 mm and 50×25 mm — one sticker per page, for a label printer that feeds die-cut labels.
• A4 sheet — a grid of labels on ordinary paper.

Leave the label printer blank to use the receipt printer. Silent printing follows the receipt setting. A row with no barcode is skipped. Weight labels still come from the scale; this prints the product code stored on the item.

Weighed items

Tick Weighed for anything sold by weight rather than by the piece. The price you enter is then read as a price per unit of weight.

Weighed products are rung up from a scale-printed label or from a live serial/network scale, or you can type the weight. Setup is covered in Selling items by weight.

Price at the till

Tick Price can change when scanned for an item that does not have one fixed price — loose produce, a service, or anything the cashier prices at the moment of sale.

Display order is a number on the product. Lower numbers show first on the till. Leave it at 0 to keep the item after the numbered ones. This is the till order unless Best sellers first is turned on in Settings.

The catalogue price stays the starting figure. When that item is scanned or tapped, the till opens a number pad so the cashier can keep that price or type another. A lower price stays on the catalogue price and the difference is a discount, checked against that cashier’s maximum and against cost — it cannot go below cost. A higher price is stored as the selling price. Price on the checkout pad, and the pencil in front of the price on the ticket line, change it again before payment. Items without the tick keep the catalogue price.

Scanning the same item again at the same price increases the quantity. A different price becomes its own line. A scale label still uses the weight or price printed on the label.

Duplicating instead of retyping

If you are adding a run of similar products — the same drink in six flavours — add the first one properly, then use Duplicate. It copies the category, tax rate, price and settings, and you change only the name and the barcode.

Editing and deleting

Editing a product changes it from that moment on. Sales you have already recorded keep the name and price they were rung up at, so correcting a typo will not rewrite last week’s receipts.

A product that has been sold, purchased, or has any stock movement cannot be deleted — the database keeps that link so history stays intact. The delete button is disabled in that case. Turn the product inactive if you no longer sell it. Delete is only for a product entered by mistake that was never used. The same rule applies to a category that still has products, or that a promotion points at.

Doing this in bulk

Typing in a few hundred products by hand is nobody’s idea of a good time. If you already have your list in a spreadsheet, use the Excel import instead — see Importing products from Excel.