Product Groups and Categories
As per our article on Understanding the Xero Integration, you will first need to create a successful Xero integration before you start creating your products; once this is done, you will be able to access your accounts and COGS in the Products general settings. Before this, there will be so such option. That's why we always recommend deciding to integrate prior to setting up your products, otherwise you may find yourself double-handling information.
Once you've successfully integrated with Xero, you can create a new product by clicking the green '+' icon at the top right of the Products view.
The New Product window will appear. Each of the sections of the New Product window is illustrated and explained in more detail below - fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory.
Product Groups and Categories
Groups and Categories are hierarchical (a group contains categories). Use these to organise your products how you see fit.
Groups allow you to group products at the highest level (e.g. services, pharmaceuticals, food, etc.)
Categories typically describe lower-level product categories (e.g. surgical services, dental services, antibiotics, dog food, etc.)
Categories are also used to set several defaults for new products. These defaults (which can all be over-ridden from the edit product screen) include:
Supplier: Default supplier for products in this category
Markup: Default markup (%)
Dispensing fee: Default dispensing fee (from selection of predefined dispensing fees)
Stock management: Defines whether products in this category are tracked by default
Product Information
Name: Product name
Short Description: A description of the product (up to 250 characters)
Description: Can contain a longer description of the product (descriptions are not visible to clients)
SKU: Stock Keeping Unit - a code that must be unique to this product. The SKU is normally equal to the barcode of the product.
Photo: Allows you to include a product shot if desired.
Group and Category: Group and Category that this product belongs to.
Active: Specifies whether the product is active or inactive. If inactive (i.e. box is un-ticked) then the product cannot be sold and is not included in stock on hand.
Drug: Specifies whether the product is a controlled substance.
Manufacturer Information
This section allows you to record the brand and shipping information for the product.
Explaining Inners, Outers and Units
To explain what inners and outers are, let's look at a simple example - the syringes mentioned above.
For this product, a syringe is the individual product unit. We use one syringe at a time and we bill customers for the number of syringes used.
These syringes come in small boxes containing 10 units. We'll call these small boxes inners for reasons we'll soon explain.
Our distributor doesn't allow us to order individual syringes one at a time, however, as it would not be economically viable for them to do so. They don't allow us to order small boxes of 10 for the same reason.
Instead, they require us to order larger boxes that contain 10 inners. These larger boxes are called outers.
So an outer contains 10 inner and an inner contains 10 units. It follows that an outer contains 100 units, so our supplier only allows us to order this product in multiples of 100 units.
If the product is shipped in individual units then inners and outers should both be set to '1'.
Configuration Items
Brand: The brand of the product.
Inner Size: The number of units contained within each inner.
The number of units contained within each outer. This is generally the product of the number of units per inner multiplied by the number of inners within each outer.
Notes
Allows you to capture useful information about the product
Active Ingredients: Designed primarily for pharmaceutical products, these active ingredients appear on drug labels for this product.
Staff Supplementary Notes: Information about the product designed for staff use only (is not disclosed to clients).
Client Supplementary Notes: Information about the product that may be disclosed to the client (e.g. via web portal, etc.)
Label Text: Information that will appear on the drug label.
Warning Text: Product warning information that will appear on the drug label.
Supplier Info
Name: Name of the supplier of this product
Code: The supplier's product code for this product
Order By: Defines whether the product is ordered in units, inners or outers. This may reflect a requirement from your supplier or your own preference.
Unit/Inner/Outer Price - allows you to enter the price per unit/inner/outer - note that this price is linked to the 'Cost Price' for the product (see below) - modifying one value changes both of them.
Unit Price
The pricing section is pretty clever - it automatically calculates and re-calculates Markup (%) or Total Price for you as you edit either field.
Cost Price: The cost price of the product.
Markup (%): The markup to assign to this product.
Dispensing Fee: Allows you to select the predefined dispensing fee attributable to this product.
Tax (%): Allows you to select the sales tax rate attributable to this product.
Total Price: Sale price to the customer, calculated using the variables above.
Stock Management
The green checkbox at the top of this section designates whether stock of this product will be tracked and managed by Panacea. If this checkbox is un-ticked, all of the items below will be greyed out and Panacea will not track inventory of this product.
Panacea will automatically estimate the number of inners, outers and units that you have on hand - note that this may not always be accurate, as Panacea has no way of tracking what inners and outers have been opened at any time. This should be used as a guide only.
On Hand: Total units on hand (in-stock)
On Order: Total units on order (ordered but not yet received)
Re-Order Level: Automatic re-ordering occurs when stock on hand is equal to or less than this value (this controls auto-fill of stock orders - you still have to create the order yourself)
Re-Order Quantity: When automatic re-ordering occurs, this many units of the product will be added to the new order.