Adding Products Manually to Inventory

Managing your inventory efficiently is crucial for the success of your business. In situations where using an Excel spreadsheet isn't your preferred method, manually adding products is a quick and straightforward alternative. In this article, we'll guide you through the steps of adding a new product manually to your inventory.

Things to Know: 

• The ability to add products to the inventory is governed by the "Accessing Inventory Details" access control setting.
• For franchise businesses, product updates at both the parent and child account levels impact all associated locations.

• Parent Account Level - Adding a Global Product: When a product is added to any child location, it will automatically be added—along with its SKU—to all locations under the parent account. Note: The price, cost, minimum, and maximum values can be configured for individual locations.
• Child Account Level - Adding a Local Product: When a local product is added to any location within a child account, it will automatically be added—along with its SKU—to all locations within that child account. Note: The price, cost, minimum, and maximum values can be configured for individual locations. 
• When viewing the inventory, you can customize which products are shown on the inventory page by selecting one of the following options:
  • All Inventory: Displays all products added at the selected location, regardless of whether they are currently stocked in back bar or retail inventory.
  • Inventory Stock at This Location: Shows only products that are currently in stock (either in the back bar or retail) at the selected location.
  • Inventory Not Stocked at This Location: Displays products added at the selected location that currently have no stock in either back bar or retail inventory.
• You can include external IDs for your Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) in MyTime, this is controlled by a hidden setting that can be enabled by our Support Team at support@mytime.com. 
• When the hidden setting to align manufacturer SKU # with external IDs is enabled, the following behaviours come into play:
  • SKU external ID will automatically be set to the same value as the manufacturer SKU # when saved
  • The system will only save the external ID if a manufacturer SKU # is present. If there is no manufacturer SKU #, the external ID will not be saved.

To get started:

1. Navigate to POS > Inventory
2. Click the Add Product button at the bottom-right corner of the page
3. Enter the product details
   • Photo - You can add an image of the product
   • Product Name -The product name that the SKU corresponds to. This field is required.
   • Category - The category associated with the product. This field is required.
   • Brand - Brand of the product
   • External ID (Product) - The external ID is a product identifier that you create when creating your products. Adding an external ID will make it easier to identify your products and be useful when updating or adding products using Ingest data. This ID will also be displayed on inventory exports. 
   • Active - Can this product be ordered?
   • Description - Text description of the product, often provided by the manufacturer
   • Sell to Clients (And Apply Taxes) - Should this product be sold to customers via the POS? 
   • Commission Eligible - Can this product be applied towards retail commissions? Select Yes if an employee is entitled to commission on selling this product. Else, select No. 
   • SKU Name - The name of the specific SKU you sell. It can include size, color, flavor, etc. 
   • Manufacturer SKU # - The unique stock-keeping unit associated with the specific version of the product
   • Barcode - The number appearing directly below the barcode image on the SKU. You can use UPC or EAN format.  
   • External ID (SKU) - This is the SKU ID column used in CSV files when ingesting data. This field is only exposed if the hidden setting is enabled. 
4. Click Save when you have added all the new product details

Once you've successfully saved your product entry, you will be redirected to the main inventory page. Here, you can further customize and enhance your product information such as price, cost, quantity, etc. 

To do this:

1. Select the Add to Inventory link next to each SKU
2. Add the following:
   • Selling Price - The price paid by the client for the SKU
   • Cost - The price paid to the vendor for the SKU, helping in profit margin calculations
   • Backbar Quantity - The current stock of the back bar product. Back bar refers to products a staff member uses at a salon or business.
   • Retail Quantity - The current stock of the product intended for retail sale
   • On Order Quantity - This field is not editable. This displays quantities from a Purchase Order in ordered status. Learn more about On Order Quantity here. 
   • Min - The minimum stock level you wish to maintain for this product. When the stock is at or below this value, you will be alerted. The alerts will appear in the notification bell when you log into the MyTime website or Scheduler App and also be sent to location managers (if configured).
   • Max - The maximum stock level desired for optimal inventory management; used to calculate the reorder amount
3. Save

You can repeat the steps above to manually add additional products. To import your product list via spreadsheet, learn more here. 

If you have any questions about adding products to Inventory, contact our Support Team at support@mytime.com.