Before you create products : setting up

Whilst creating a new product, you must input the brand name; therefore a good place to start is to set up the brand names of your products. Go to Products>Brands to enter this data. As some products may not be branded, it is recommended that you also add a brand name as “other”.

To organise your products you will need to place them into categories and sub-categories, go to Products>Categories to edit default categories and add subcategories if required. If you have a Pearl website, these will also be the categories in which customers search/browse for your products online.

Adding products using the online interface

To manually input products, click Products->Create new from the main menu. Enter a name. Type “!” in the name, and you'll see that you’re not allowed. Pearl has a large number of error checking procedures in place to prevent you entering bad data. 

Choose a brand, choose a category (one that does not have any further subcategories), set a cost price (what you pay for the item), set a retail price (ex vat) and enter a description under the "English" tab. Save the product, and you'll be taken to the product listing page. To edit the item, click the pencil icon.

To make the product appear on your website, it will need to have a retail price set for the region that the website is being viewed in, and also it will need to be “web enabled”. You can sell any item using the admin or EPOS screens regardless of its web enabled setting.

Product suppliers

Adding a supplier to a product will allow you to create automatic purchase orders when stock runs low. You should also enter an alert level, a stock quantity below which Pearl will flag an item for re-order.

Finding products

To find a product, enter part of the name into the product quick search box and click “go”. Alternatively you can click Products->Categories, browse to the category and click the number in the products column to see all products in a certain category.

Delete a product

1. Find the product: Type the name, or a part of the name, into the product quick search box and click
2. Click the trash can icon for the product you want to delete.
3. The page will reload. Confirm that you really do want to delete the item.
4. You cannot delete products if stock exists.

Product tax codes

Each item must be allocated a Tax Code so that Pearl can automatically create a VAT return. When creating or editing a product, select the Tax Code under the [Product prices] tab.

Adding images to products

1. Prepare your images

In you image editing software (eg: photoshop) make sure that you resize your images to no larger than 600x600 pixels - This is the maximum size that Pearl displays.
Pearl will resize images any larger than this and you have more control over the quality of the image if you use your image editing softeware to do this.
Try and use the bicubic resampling method to acheive the crispest resized images.
File Type: Try to use JPEGs for pictorial images and GIFs for grphical images - the compression that each format uses is more suited toeach image type.

Resolution : 72dpi
mode: for JPEG/JPG - do NOT use progressive jpegs - use standard instead.
target file size: you should aim for lower than 60Kb - adjust the compression when saving you images to acheive this.

2. Uploading images

Product prices

To edit the price for a product, open the product edit page and click the [Product prices] tab.
Since Pearl is web-enabled and is designed for sales to multiple countries, you can set a different price for each country. You can also set a different price for each price group.

All product prices are stored as net value (ie without tax) to 4 decimal places, and tax is added depending on the customer's country and the product tax code set. The "gross" field on the left of the [Product prices] is only to save you digging a calculator out to calculate the item's net price. Just type the gross price in here (the RRP) and the net price will be copied to the top of the first price group column. You must copy this down to all required countries.

If a country/price group does not have a price, then the item will not appear on the website when viewed from that country, even if it is set as "web enabled".

Product stock levels / stock control

Pearl helps you keep track of stock quantity and value if you want.

To allow stock control for a product, make sure you set "Manage stock levels" to "yes" under the product info tab.

Stock levels are reduced when a sale is made and are increased when a purchase or refund is made. Each stock item purchased has a value, this value may vary between purchase orders so items are tracked by the date they arrive. The oldest items are sold first (First In First Out - FIFO).

Creating a customer refund with specific products will add these products back into your database. If required, the items can be written off as unsellable using the stock transfer wizard which will also update the accounting system. You can create a refund with only adjustment lines which will not affect stock levels.

Pearl also keeps track of stock (asset) owned outside the premises. When you enter a supplier invoice for stock, your stock value increases by the same amount as the debt you owe to your supplier. This stock is accounted for by "stock on order".

Barcodes

See the Retail / POS help for information on bar codes.

Tips for products

Make your product name identify the product even when it is not shown with the brand next to it. Don't forget that the product name must be unique for each product. So for example, if your store contains tee shirts from Nike and Adidas, you cannot call them both "Tee shirt". We recommend adding the brand to the start of the name, eg "Nike tee shirt". This also makes it easier to find the product in lists and reduces potential for error.

By careful about using Microsoft Word to edit product descriptions as it tends to add lots of junk html code to the description that will corrupt your product display.