Products and catalogue

31Managing products: categories, filter, bulk actions (3.0)

A few hundred products? The Products tab (Settings → Products) now has a search box and a filter above the list, a categories dialog, multi-select with bulk actions, and it refuses a second product with the same barcode or name.

• Search & filter: type in the box and the list narrows as you type (name, barcode, category, description). The drop-down next to it filters: no barcode, no price, no cost, hidden / visible, tracked stock, low stock, expiring, no picture, variants only, duplicate barcode / duplicate name — and a second drop-down picks one category. The header shows N of M. Esc clears everything.
• Categories button: every category with its product count. Rename (every product in it follows; a built-in name like Beverages keeps its translation, or type any name of your own), Merge into… another category (the old one disappears), Delete (its products move to General or a category you pick) and ▲ / ▼ to order them the way the sales screen shows them.
• Bulk actions: select several rows (Ctrl or Shift with the click, Ctrl+A for all) and press Bulk actions: move to a category, show / hide, needs cooking on / off, change the price by ± % or ± amount rounded to 0.25 / 0.5 / 1 (an example line shows the result before you apply), wholesale price = retail ± % (when price levels are on), and delete. Every action asks with the count and saves once. Variants follow their master.
• No duplicates: saving a product whose barcode is already on another product, or whose name matches another one (ignoring case, spaces and diacritics), is refused — the message names the other product and offers to open it. Excel import and the old-copy importer skip such rows and list them instead of silently creating a second product. Use the duplicate barcode / duplicate name filter once to clean older data with the bulk delete.
• Keyboard: Ctrl+F search box, Esc clear, Enter open the selected product, Delete delete, Ctrl+A select all, Ctrl+N new product. The ? button next to the search box lists them.
• The list stays put: after you add or edit a product the list no longer jumps to the top or flickers — it keeps its scroll position and the product you were on stays selected.
• A new product lands in its category: Add puts the new product right after the last product of the same category (a product with variants keeps them together), not at the end of the list, and selects it there. A category with no products yet goes to the end.
• Sort by category: the button under Categories groups the whole list by category in the current category order (the sales-screen order, the one you set with ▲ / ▼ in the Categories dialog) after a confirmation; products keep their order inside each category. Moving a category with ▲ / ▼ moves its products with it, so the sales screen and the list always agree.
• Faster adding: in the new-product screen a second button Save & add another (Ctrl+Enter) saves the product and opens an empty one straight away with the same category, the same “needs cooking” and the same unit — type a whole shelf in one run. Enter alone still saves and closes.
• Hide the fields you never use: Settings → Features has three switches, all on by default: Cost & profit (the cost field and the “no cost” filter), Expiry dates (the expiry field, column and filter, the inventory Expiring tab and the expiry alert) and Stock (on hand & full stock) (the stock rows in the editor and the stock filters). Switch off what your shop does not fill in and the product screen gets shorter; the saved values are kept.
• Edit several products at once (4.0): select two or more rows and press Edit (or Enter, or Edit selected… in the bulk menu). The normal product screen opens for all of them: the name reads “several products (N)” and the barcode shows “—” (those two cannot change here); every other field — price, cost, wholesale and sale price, category, unit / by weight, needs cooking, show on screen, expiry, stock and full stock, ETA code, add-ons, picture — shows the value the products share, or a grey “several prices” / “several values” placeholder when they differ. Only what you touch is saved: type a price and every selected product gets it; leave the placeholder alone and each product keeps its own. A product with variants: category, show / hide, cooking, unit and add-ons reach its variants too; the prices reach them only when you tick apply the price to the variants too; stock, expiry, picture and ETA code stay on the rows you selected. The list keeps its place and your selection afterwards.
• No receipt on its own (4.0): the Categories dialog has a check box per category — see the printer & receipt section: a sale made only of those categories is saved without printing.
• Pick from the catalogue (4.0): instead of typing a few hundred products, press Pick from the catalogue in the Products tab, next to the import and export buttons — and on a brand-new till the program offers it by itself right after it asks what kind of shop you are. A ready list of 52,548 products opens (18,493 of them with a product picture, in 59 Arabic categories): type in the box at the top and it narrows by name or barcode as you type, the drop-down next to it picks one category, and you tick what your shop sells. The footer counts them (N items ticked); Add the ticked items adds them and tells you how many went in and how many were skipped because you already have them (same barcode or same name — nothing is ever duplicated). Each product lands in its own category, without a price — you type yours (see below). The catalogue is open to shops that share their product list — see Who can use the catalogue below.
• The catalogue has no prices (4.1): products come in without a price, because what a pack sells for in your shop is yours to decide. The No price filter above the list gathers them, and the keyboard does the rest (4.1.1): select the first one and press Enter — the editor opens with the cursor already in the price box — type the price and press Ctrl+Enter (Save & next): it saves and opens the next product in the list, again on the price. A few seconds per product; Enter alone saves and stops. Cost and stock stay empty too; fill them in when you want profit or stock figures.
• It works offline: the picker reads the catalogue file kept on the PC — see The catalogue on your PC below. No internet the very first time? The message says so and offers the Excel / CSV import instead. Your product is not in the catalogue? Add it normally with Add — the catalogue is a head start, not a limit.
• Keyboard (no mouse needed): Ctrl+F the search box, ↑ ↓ move between items, Space or Enter tick / untick, Ctrl+A ticks everything currently shown, Esc closes, F1 lists the keys.

The catalogue on your PC: one encrypted file, no internet needed (4.1)

Since 4.1 the whole catalogue — 52,548 products and 18,493 pictures — lives inside the program as one encrypted file.

• Downloaded once, in the background: a sharing shop gets it once — about 70 MB, while you keep working. From then on Pick from the catalogue, the barcode lookup and scan-to-add (section 3) work with no internet.
• Private to your PC: the key that opens the file is issued by PosMasr to that PC only, so a copy of the file is useless on another PC.
• Kept up to date: the program checks for a newer catalogue at most once a day.
• Pictures come from the file: a picture you add with a product is taken out of that file and saved with the product — nothing is loaded from our server afterwards.
• A cleaner list: 59 Arabic categories, English names that did not match the product removed, and only barcodes that mean the same product in every shop — a shop's own short in-store codes are not shared.

Barcode lookup in the product screen (4.0)

The product screen asks the catalogue about a barcode for you, so a product you hold in your hand is filled in by a scan instead of by typing.

• Scan or type the barcode in the barcode box while you add or edit a product. If the catalogue knows it, it fills in the name, the category, a description made from the product's English name and brand, and the product picture when the catalogue has one.
• Adding a product: the fields fill in at once — check them and save as usual.
• Editing a product: nothing is overwritten on its own. A strip shows the catalogue's picture and name with an Apply button; press it to take them, or carry on and ignore it.
• Your numbers are never touched: the lookup does not change the price, the cost, the wholesale price, the stock or the expiry date — those stay exactly what you typed.
• It works offline, from the catalogue file the program keeps on the PC (the same file Pick from the catalogue and scan-to-add use). A picture you apply is saved into your own program with the product.
• The barcode is not in the catalogue? Nothing happens — type the product in as you always do.

Who can use the catalogue (4.0)

The ready catalogue exists because shops share their product lists, so it is open to the shops that share theirs. Pick from the catalogue, the barcode lookup and scan-to-add work when all three of these are true in Settings → Backup (section 11):

• A copy at PosMasr is on — Products list only or Full backup.
• Upload automatically once a day is ticked.
• Do not use my products in the shared catalogue is not ticked.

Pictures on the sales buttons (4.1)

• The switch: at the bottom of the Products tab, Show product pictures on the sales screen buttons turns the pictures on or off (managers only). It is the same setting as Product pictures on the sales buttons in Settings → Features — change it in either place.
• An offer, once: when catalogue pictures are applied to your products while the switch is off, the program offers once to switch it on.
• Readable and fast: each picture is scaled to the button so the name and the price stay readable, and the sales screen redraws much faster with hundreds of products.