Loading your catalogue without typing it twice

The commonest mistake is trying to enter every product in the shop on the first day. Two hours in, everybody gives up tired, and the system sits there half-filled.

The rule that actually works: load only what sells regularly. In most shops ninety per cent of the day's takings come from between 50 and 200 lines. The rest you add at the counter on the day they sell, which takes ten seconds.

Adding one product

Go to Products in the list on the left, then new product. What it needs:

1. Name — the name you call it by, not the one on the catalogue. "Teer Soybean 1L" works; "Edible oil, refined" does not. Your staff will search by the name they say out loud.
2. Selling price — what you sell it for.
3. Cost price — what you pay for it. You can leave this out, but filling it in is what makes the profit figure work. Left empty, the system cannot tell you what you made today.
4. Stock — how many are on the shelf right now.

Everything else — barcode, category, supplier, the low-stock threshold — can wait.

If it has a barcode

Put the cursor in the barcode field and pull the trigger on the scanner. A scanner types like a keyboard, so there is nothing to install. From then on, scanning that item at the counter drops it straight onto the bill — no searching by name.

No barcode is no problem either. You can search by name at the counter, and you can print your own labels from the labels and barcodes screen under Stock.

Bringing a list in from a file

If your list already exists somewhere — a spreadsheet, an export from old software, even something you typed out by hand — you do not have to re-enter it line by line.

There is an import button on the products screen. It goes like this:

1. Download the sample file. It shows which column holds what.
2. Arrange your list into those columns. Name and price are enough.
3. Upload it. Before anything is saved, the system shows you how many rows are good and which ones have a problem.
4. If it looks right, confirm.

Where a row is wrong the system skips that row and takes the rest — it does not hand the whole file back. You get a list of what was left out.

When a price changes

Do not delete the product and re-enter it. Open it and change the price — old bills keep the price of their own day, so nothing that already happened moves.

How to know you have done enough

Sit at the counter for three days. If most bills can be rung up without adding anything new, your catalogue is loaded. The rest fills itself in.