Products can be added individually directly into Brightpearl or by importing a CSV file. A "Product" can be a stocked item, or non-stock tracked; a service or miscellaneous item.
Before adding products you should read the Products Settings documents and setup the following:
- Brands
- Categories
- Nominal codes
Learn more about importing product / service items
Create a Product / Service
To manually input products / services:
- Go to Products > New product/service.
- In the Product info tab and enter the item name and assign it to one or more categories.
- Select the product Brand; this field becomes available once you have defined your brands. If you don't define brands the system will use "other".
- In the Stock/Inventory tab specify whether you want to manage inventory levels for this item; this would be No for a service or miscellaneous item.
- Work through the tabs completing the fields as required. Read below for more detail on product fields.
- Click Save changes.
Product Tax Codes
Each item must be allocated a Tax Code so that Brightpearl can automatically create a VAT return. When creating or editing a product, select the Tax Code under the Product prices tab.
Product Accounting
Products will, by default, use the system default sales, purchases and stock account as defined in Setup > Company > Accounting: Nominal codes. You can change them per item (manually or imported). These nominal codes will always be used unless the customer/supplier record has been set to use specific codes or they are manually changed on the order.
Supplier Products
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 Brightpearl will flag an item for re-order.
Warehouses
Each of your warehouses will be displayed on your product records. You can enter a default warehouse location to specify where in your warehouse the product is stored. You will need to enter a minimum stock level and re-order quantity to be able to use the Low Inventory report and automatically create Purchase Orders.
Learn more about warehouses & locations
Learn more about the low inventory report and automatic purchase orders
Barcodes
Barcodes can be used for scanning products for sales.
Website Images
Upload one or more images to products to display on your Brightpearl Webstore.
In your image editing software (e.g. photoshop) make sure that you resize your images to no larger than 600x600 pixels - this is the maximum size that Brightpearl displays. Brightpearl will resize images any larger than this so you will retain more control if you provide a smaller size. Try and use the bicubic resampling method to achieve the crispest resized images.
File Type: Try to use JPEGs for pictorial images and GIFs for graphical images - the compression that each format uses is more suited to each 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 achieve this.
You can also use product category images/icons, these are uploaded in the Brightpearl Webstore module. Go to Website > Edit web pages, click the Upload category icon next to the category and choose an image to be used as the thumbnail/icon for the whole category. If you do not add a category icon, Brightpearl will check one level deeper for any products with images and randomly assign a product image as the category icon.
Please be aware that if there are no products within one level of the category tree then no icon will be displayed if you don't add an icon yourself.
Featured Products
A featured product will be selected for special formatting on your Brightpearl Webstore (as per your site design) and as "quick-add" items if you are using EPOS.
You can create a whole web page for featured products or add a section within a web page, they will also be highlighted within the online product lists.
Product prices are added to Price Lists. You will need to have set up your price lists first, if you wish to have more than a basic buy and sell price.
Prices are added using breaks, this allows you to use a lower price for bulk purchases. In the break field enter the minimum quantity for which the price applies, for example:
1+ gives a price of £10.00
10+ gives a price of £9.50
20+ gives a price of £9.00
Price lists can be created to be either inclusive or exclusive of tax, you will be able to see which next to the prices heading. Tax inclusive figures are always displayed as underlined in Brightpearl. You can use the Net price calculator on the screen to work out nat and gross values.
If a price list 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".
Learn more about price lists & prices
Descriptions
A product description is useful for providing more detail to online customers and any of your staff using EPOS or Brightpearl back-office.
The long description is used for displaying product information on your Brightpearl Webstore, such as specifications, dimensions or recommendations.
The short description is used with some 3rd party ecommerce systems, for example, if you have a webstore with Magento you can display both a short and long description of your products online.
Both these descriptions are displayed when further product detail is desired in EPOS (product lookup) or in the back-office product list (click on inventory level figures).
Bundles
Bundles are created as a product on which you then add all the individual items to be included in the bundle. When the bundle product is used on a sales order, all of the items added on the bundle tab will be added.
Delete a Product
Products can only be deleted if no stock exists. Products are deleted using batch processing from your product listing. When the product or products you want to delete are listed, tick the relevant checkboxes and then click the delete button.
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.
