search-icon

Managing your products and services is the main function of the inventory module. If you are using DEAR for the first time, you will need to populate your inventory and add the stock on hand numbers. See the Getting Started Guide for more information.


Dropshipping, Low Stock Reorder and Backorders require adding suppliers to a product.


You can also generate price lists to print or send to your customers and view product availability from this module. 


Prerequisites


Table of Contents


Product and service permissions

[back to top]


DEAR offers fine-grained control over user permissions. Grant users full or read-only permission to the different features of the inventory module, and create roles with pre-defined permissions to assign to users. 


DEAR allows you to set the following permissions for the inventory module (Settings → Users and Roles):


These permissions are available under Inventory.


Products & Families

Products, product families and services are created and managed from the Inventory module. The Prices info, Suppliers, Movements/Service Usage and Bill of Materials tabs are found on the product/service details screen (Inventory → Products →[selected product]). 

  • Products & Families: (Read-only) View the list and details of products, services and product families. (Full Access) Create new products/services/product families and edit existing item properties. 
  • Product – Prices info: (Full Access) Set and change prices on the Price TierProduct tab. (Read-only) View price information. 
  • Product – Suppliers: (Full Access) Add new suppliers for this product, set fixed supplier prices and last supplier prices, specify if the product is drop-shipped by the supplier (if Optional/Always Drop Ship is specified in the product document header). (Read-only) View supplier info for the product. 
  • Product – Movements & Service Usage: View all movements or usage for the product/service. 
  • Product – Bill of Materials: (Full Access) Add a bill of materials to an item. Edit bill of material components/labour costs. Specify auto-assembly/auto-disassembly. (Read-only) View the Bill of Materials tab for a product if applicable. 


Product Availability

DEAR allows the user to view availability for all of their products, including what has been allocated to sale and work orders.

  • Product Availability: View the product availability screen. 
  • Product Availability – Stock Value: Can add the Stock Value column to the product availability screen. 
    • NOTE: You will have to add this column through the table settings to make it visible. 


See Managing Users and Roles and User permissions explained.


Populating your inventory

[back to top]


The products and services you buy and sell are stored in your inventory. If using DEAR for the first time, you will need to populate your inventory and add the stock on hand numbers. 


NOTE: If you are using Xero or QuickBooks Online, products and services can be set to be imported automatically to DEAR from the accounting system automatically. Inventory tracking in Xero/QBO must be turned OFF, or duplicate COGS transactions will be generated. 

Create a new product or service

[back to top]


Products and services can be created new or cloned from existing products. Products with multiple variants (colours, sizes, etc.) can be created using Product Families.


If default values for new product records have been set up previously in Settings → Reference Books → Default Field Values, the applicable fields will be pre-filled with these values. If default values are not set up, all fields will be empty. Regardless of whether default values are set up or not, all fields on the New Product page remain editable. For more information, see Default Field Values for New Products.


To create a new product or service:

  1. Create a new product/service by navigating to Inventory → New → Product/Service or to Inventory → Products and click +.
  2. Fill in the product/service details. See product/service general information for more about the different fields. 
  3. Click Save to finish.


Save time when creating multiple similar products or services by cloning existing products in your inventory. 


To make a new product/service from an existing entry:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
  2. Select the product you wish to clone to open the product details screen. 
  3. Click Clone
  4. Edit the details as necessary.
  5. Click Save.


Product/Service general information fields

[back to top]


When opening a product's record, basic information and an image preview are shown first on the General tab. Other sections, such as Prices, Dimensions, Suppliers hold additional product information. Some of this is optional, while some is required before you can use other Cin7 Core features. For example, entering supplier information for a product is required before you can drop ship that product. 


In this section we will explain the fields of the General tab, see more product settings for help filling out the other sections. 


Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory for creating a new product. Once the product details are filled in, click Save to finish. 


Image preview shows the default image, or no image if no image has been uploaded yet. Clicking the image will direct the user to the Images and attachments tab where images are managed. 

  • SKU*: Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) is the unique identifier of the product. 
    • Unacceptable SKU: All numerals, starting with 0. This will cause problems importing and exporting data into CSV templates. E.g. 01 234 567.
    • Acceptable SKU: Alphanumeric, including starting with 0. E.g. 003-Gloves, 103-Gloves.
    • Acceptable SKU: All numerals, not starting with 0. E.g. 1 234 567.
  • Product Name*: Enter the product name. 
  • Type*: Choose from Stock, Service, Gift Card, Non-Inventory or Fixed Asset.
    • Stock refers to items that can be moved to and from your inventory. 
    • Service describes transactions where no physical goods are transferred to the customer, e.g. shipping, insurance, handling. 
    • Gift Cards can be used by your customers to pay for products and services. A Gift Card type item automatically appears in your inventory when gift cards are enabled, and only one gift card item will be in your inventory at any time. See Gift Cards for more information. 
    • Non-Inventory products are allowed to be purchased or sold without checking for their availability in stock, e.g. items that your organisation purchases but does not re-sell, such as office supplies. See Non-Inventory products for more information. 
    • Fixed Asset refers to the long-term assets, tangible assets used in a business that are classified as property, plant and equipment. See Fixed Assets for more information. 
  • Product Category*: Choose a category from the drop-down list or click + to add a new category. Only one category can be chosen per product. To add a product to more groups of products, use Product Tags.
  • Brand: Enter the brand of the product. Only one brand can be chosen per product.
  • Costing Method*: Costing Methods in DEAR Inventory are based on real accounting methods. Different inventory costing methods are best suited to different situations and financial goals. See Costing Methods for more information. 
  • Unit of Measure*: Unit of Measure for sales of the product. The default is Item, but new units (e.g. Hour, kg, L) can be added by clicking Add a New Unit of Measure.
  • Dropship*: Choose between No Drop Ship, Optionally Drop Ship and Always Drop Ship for the product. See here for more information on Dropshipping.
  • Bill of Materials: Select a BOM for the product if this product needs to be assembled from raw materials and/or product components, or can be disassembled into components. The available options are Assembly BOM and Production BOM. Selecting these options will generate a Bill of Materials tab where you can enter the details. See Bill of Materials and Production BOM for more information. 
  • Accounts and Tax Rules (optional for some item types): Choose to which Accounts COGs, Inventory and Revenue are mapped in your accounting records. These can also be entered at the purchase/sale level. Tax rules can be applied for Purchases and Sales. These can also be applied at the customer/supplier level or on individual purchases or sales. Accounts and tax rules can be optional or mandatory depending on the item type, e.g. it is mandatory to specify an expense account for non-inventory items.
    • NOTE: The product's account mapping has the highest priority. That means that it will override default account mapping and supplier/customer account mapping on the purchase/sale order. If you do not use special accounts or tax rules for your items we recommend leaving these fields blank. This way default accounts will be used. Consult with your accountant or bookkeeper if you are unsure.
  • Product Discount: Discounts can be applied at the product level. Learn more about discounts. Product Discount can be overridden by Customer/Customer Group Discount.
  • Stock Locator: Refers to the location of the stock within the warehouse or a particular shelf to help locate products.
  • Warranty: The manufacturer warranties to be applied to the product. The options available on the list are set up in
    Settings > Reference Books > Warranties. See Warranties for more information.
  • HS Code: The harmonized system (HS) is a standardized numerical method of classifying traded products and commonly used throughout the goods export process. It is used by customs authorities around the world to identify products when assessing duties and taxes and for gathering statistics. This field is imported/exported to sales channels that support this information and to shipping channels that support this information. 
  • Country of Origin (COO): Represents the country or countries of manufacture, production, design, or brand origin where a product comes from.
  • Always Show Quantity: If the product type is set to Non-Inventory, this field is displayed and can accept any number greater than 0.
  • Status*: You can set products to either Active or Deprecated. Deprecated products will not appear in drop-down lists of products when making purchases or sales, and can be completely deleted from the system if they have not yet been used in transactions. 
  • Default Location: You can enter a default storage location for this product. 
  • Additional Attributes Set: Add custom fields to better describe your products. Only one additional attribute set can be used for a product at a time. Adding an additional attributes set will make an additional attributes tab appear in the product screen. See Additional Attributes for more information.
  • Barcode: By entering a barcode number for a product, you can use the Scan feature to identify products during other DEAR operations.
  • Minimum before Reorder and Reorder Quantity: These affect low stock reorder points for the product. See more information about Low Stock Reorder.
  • Product Tags: Product Tags can be used to group products together. You can add as many tags as you require, separated by commas.
  • Description: You can enter a short and long description for your product. The long description has an HTML editor for formatting. This information is mandatory when using the eBay or Magento Sales Channels.
    • NOTE: If the description has been converted the description to HTML format and you want to revert it back to plain text, you will need to remove all of the data in the Description field and save the product profile.
  • Pick Zones: DEAR allows you to assign products to one or more Pick Zones to streamline picking. This feature is only relevant to users of the DEAR Warehouse Management Solution (WMS) app. See Pick Zones for more information. 
  • I am selling this product: Unchecking this box will stop the product or service appearing for sales processes. It will still be visible for purchase and production operations.
  • Short description: Enter a short description of the product here. This description is shown on your sales channels.
  • Description: Enter a more detailed description of the product here. This description is shown on your sales channels.
  • Internal Note: Enter any information that does not fit elsewhere here and should be kept for internal use only. This information is NOT shared publicly on your sales channels.


Set default values for new products and services

[back to top]


DEAR allows default field values to be configured for new products, customers and suppliers, allowing faster and more convenient data entry from anywhere within the system. When default field values are set up for products, any time a new product or service is created from within DEAR, the available fields are pre-filled with these values. Default values can be edited during or after product creation if required.


Default field values are set up from Settings → Reference Books. After navigating to Reference Books, you should see the Default Field Values section. From here, select Product.


The fields that allow the setup of default values are dynamic – they are displayed according to the selected product type. 

  • If Product Type = Fixed Asset, all fields are displayed.
    • Category
    • Brand
    • Costing Method
    • Unit of Measure
    • Drop Ship
    • Product Discount
    • Default Location
    • Additional Attributes Set
    • I'm selling this product
    • Fixed Asset Type
  • If Product Type = Stock or Non-Inventory, all fields with the exception of Fixed Asset Type are displayed.
  • If Product Type = Gift Card or Service, only some of the fields are displayed. 
    • Service: Category, Brand, Product Discount, Default Location, Additional Attributes Set, I'm selling this product
    • Gift Card: Category, Brand, Unit of Measure, Additional Attributes Set, I'm selling this product




Generate descriptions with AI

[back to top]


Coming up with product descriptions for an entire catalog – which can be thousands of items – is time consuming and repetitive work. With this subscription add-on, use AI prompts to instantly generate short and long descriptions for your products at the click of a button. You can do this from the My subscription page of your account. 15 day free trial is available. 


Set your AI prompts from the General Settings:

  • Go to Settings → General Settings → Products and measurements settings
  • There are two fields where you can enter AI prompts. One will be used for new descriptions, while the second will be used to rephrase existing descriptions. Cin7 Core provides default prompts, but these can be changed at any time. 


Use the AI prompts to generate descriptions from a product’s record:

  • Go to Inventory → Products → [select product] 
  • On the General tab, the option Generate with Awill now be visible alongside the Short description and Long description fields. 
  • Pressing this option will open a popup window. 
  • User can see the prompt, new description, in editable fields. Old description will be displayed if rephrasing but cannot be edited. Clicking Generate will use AI to generate a new description, while Apply will use that description for the field.


Import an Inventory List

[back to top]


When dealing with many inventory items, it may be difficult to create them individually. You have the ability to upload the inventory list via a CSV file template. The maximum number of entries per import is 5000 lines. This is especially useful when setting up DEAR for the first time. 


To import an Inventory List:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
  2. Click Import → Inventory List.
  3. Download the Inventory List CSV template.
  4. Copy the information from your Inventory List from your old system into the template. The column headings and heading positions must remain unchanged for the import to work correctly. If you don't have information for some columns, they can be left blank unless they are a mandatory field (see fields marked with an asterisk above).
  5. Upload the saved Inventory List template.


Set Stock on Hand Figures

[back to top]


Once your inventory is populated, you have the ability to also upload Stock on Hand figures for your current stock.


NOTE: This operation should only be performed when initially setting up DEAR Inventory. You should not be using this function to update stock balances if you already have stock figures in the system. DEAR Inventory uses actual accounting costing methods by uploading the stock on hand template multiple times; we'll create new instances of the products rather than updating existing quantities.

To change stock figures after the initial setup, you will have to use Stock Adjustment or Stocktake.


To upload Stock on Hand figures:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
  2. Click Import → Stock on Hand.
  3. Download the Stock on Hand CSV template.
  4. Enter the stock on hand figures into the template. The column headings and heading positions must remain unchanged for the import to work correctly. Product Code, Quantity, Average Cost, Location and Received Date are required fields. 
  5. Upload the saved Stock on Hand template.


Edit product/service details in bulk

[back to top]


You can also edit in bulk the details of the products currently in the system. In this case, you will need to use the Export function.


To edit product/service details in bulk:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
  2. Click Export → Inventory List or Export → Inventory List (without descriptions).
  3. A download window will appear with the Inventory List CSV file.
  4. Open the file and make the changes.
  5. Using Import → Inventory List, upload the new Inventory List.


More product settings

[back to top]


The lower half of the product screen holds more product information. Some tabs, such as Prices, Dimensions, Suppliers, can be filled in by the user while others like Movements/Service Usage track the product/service during transactions. 


Set Prices and Custom Prices

[back to top]


DEAR Inventory lets you set up to 10 price points for each individual product depending on your subscription type. Customers are assigned a price tier which sets what price they can buy products for. Prices can be set manually or calculated according to your average cost for the item plus a markup percentage. Setting prices at the product level is optional; they can be set and modified at the purchase level if necessary. See Managing Price Tiers for more information. 


This screen also shows the Current Average Cost – the average costs of all product units bought from your suppliers. 


NOTE: Average cost is for informational purposes only. The average cost in DEAR does NOT affect your P&L statement. All COGS calculations are done using accounting costing methods such as FIFO or FEFO.


You can set custom prices for the products in your inventory for selected customers. Custom prices take precedence over regular product prices. See Setting Custom Prices for more information. 


View stock availability

[back to top]


The Stock tab shows the availability of the product in your different locations. From here, you will know the number of stock you have On Hand and Available for order, and the number of stock currently On Order and Allocated. The next delivery date of the product in your locations are also displayed here.

 

The Stock tab is not used for changing a product's stock levels. For that, you will need to create a stock adjustment from Inventory → Stock Adjustment. For more information, see Stock Adjustment and Stock Revaluation.


Set product and import dimensions

[back to top]


The Dimensions tab allows you to set the dimensions, weight, and unit of measures for a product. It also allows you to set carton volume and pack quantity, which is useful for importers for apportioning freight based on volume or making full container shipments. 


Filling in this tab is not mandatory and you will still be able to process purchases and sales without this information. However, setting the dimensions and weight of an item is mandatory in order to use most fulfilment services.


NOTE: This option is only available for items of the Stock and Non-Inventory type. 


Enter the product dimensions and make sure the unit of measure is correct. Default dimension units of measure are defined in Settings → General Settings → Product & Measurements Settings, but can be overridden for a product from this screen. 


Enter the import carton quantities and dimensions. The unit of measurement is used for both product and import dimensions.  

  • Enter the quantity of units in the inner carton (in this example, 4).
  • Enter the quantity of inner cartons in the outer carton (in this example, 8).
  • The total number of units in the outer carton = 4 x 8 = 32. 


NOTE: If cubic volume is displayed as a negative value, something has gone wrong, please enter the dimensions and recalculate. 



Additional Attributes

[back to top]


Adding an Additional Attributes set to the product in the document header will make an additional attributes tab appear in the product screen. Only one additional attribute set can be applied to a product.


Values can be added to the custom fields in the newly visible tab. See Additional Attributes for more information.


Add suppliers to a product

[back to top]


Adding Suppliers to a product is a prerequisite for using the Dropship, Low Stock Reorder and Backorder functionalities, but is optional otherwise. See the corresponding links for more detailed information. 


To attach one or more suppliers to a product:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
  2. Select the product you wish to add a supplier to.
  3. Click the Suppliers tab.
  4. Click to add Suppliers.
  5. Choose a supplier from the drop-down list.
  6. Enter the Supplier SKU, Product Name and Product URL if desired.
  7. Check the Dropship box if you would like to allow dropshipping from this supplier. 
  8. Enter the product's Fixed Price if the supplier has a fixed price for this product. Latest Price is auto-filled from your last purchase order with this supplier.


Product prices by supplier can also be added in bulk via CSV import by navigating to Inventory → Products → Import → Product Prices by Supplier.


Set Smart Reordering parameters

[back to top]


Lead, safety, and reorder quantity are set up per supplier on the Products page, from the Suppliers tab. By default, for suppliers with multiple locations, the different locations will inherit the values of the lead, safety, and reorder quantity of the supplier. However, these values can be changed per location, if needed.


The Smart Reordering feature in DEAR uses these features to forecast product sales and generating email alerts to reorder products from merchants. You can track inventory levels for each of your locations and configure the Inventory Velocity Report to run at scheduled intervals so that you can be kept informed when there is a need to reorder a product. 


Delete supplier prices from products

[back to top]


Supplier product prices can be deleted one at a time from a product by clicking the delete symbol next to an entry. Supplier product prices can be deleted in bulk from multiple products at once via CSV import. 

  1. Go to Inventory → Products → Export  → Product Prices by Supplier and download the CSV file.
  2. Open the file. Type Delete in the Action column of all the supplier product prices you wish to remove from your products. 
  3. Save the file and re-upload the edited file via Inventory → Products → Import → Product Prices by Supplier.


Set Stock Reorder Levels

[back to top]


Reorder levels can be set for total product quantities in the document header, but also for each product location. One or more suppliers must be attached to the product to use this functionality. See Low Stock Reorder for more information about Stock Reorder Levels. 


Track product movements/service usage

[back to top]


The Movements tab keeps a record of all movements and transactions for this product, although it is not available for non-inventory products. It tracks:

  • Purchases
  • Sales
  • Stock adjustments
  • Stocktakes
  • Transfers
  • Restocks
  • Unstocks
  • Finished goods.


Movements can be shown via quantities, quantities and costs, or effects on stock availability. You can change this option in the drop-down field at the top-right. 


For service items, service usage replaces the Movements tab. Purchase and sale transactions are shown here. 


NOTE: The user can use the Search field to look for a specific transaction by typing information on the Type of transaction, Date, Document Number, Status, Location, Batch/Serial No., Quantity, Cost, Price or Amount.


Discounts

[back to top]


Discounts can be applied at the customer/customer group level for the product. This overrides the product level discount. Learn more about Product Discounts.


Add images and attachments

[back to top]


Use the images and attachments section to upload multiple images and attachments to the product from your computer. Images will be used for sales channels and shops like eBay, Magento, DEAR POS and DEAR B2B.


The images will be displayed in the same order that they are uploaded. Users can drag and drop images to change the order. Default image cannot be dragged and dropped and will always be displayed first. The modified image order sequence will be passed to items listed in B2B portal, and this is planned for eCommerce channels also in a release in the near future. User can also change the image preview view from list view to grid view from this page. 


Add additional units of measure

[back to top]


The Additional Units of Measure function allows more than one unit of measure to be specified for a product or service. For example, if the same bottle of wine is sold as an individual bottle, a case of 6 and a case of 12. 


The additional units of measure functionality can be used in the following situations:

  • to automatically disassemble a case into singles if purchased in cases and sold as singles
  • to automatically assemble a case from singles if sold as a case and kept in stock as singles
  • to do the unit of measure conversion if purchased in kg and needs to be converted to lb, etc.


See Additional units of measure for more information. 


Add additional descriptions

[back to top]


Add additional descriptions for your connected sales channels. 


Manage products in sales channels

[back to top]


The Channels tab lets you view the product's quantities in DEAR and, if applicable, in your sales channel stores, and see if a product is already listed in your sales channel store or not. In addition, you can list, unlist or remove a product from a store and update the product information as shown in a store. See Managing products in sales channels for more information. 


Set a product as non-sellable

[back to top]


You may wish to set a product or service as non-sellable (e.g. due to expired stock, components for finished goods, etc.) This is easily done from the product details screen. This will stop the product from appearing for selection in sales tasks.


Simply change the I am selling this product field to No. This action can be done in bulk via the Inventory List CSV upload. 


Deprecate and delete items

[back to top]


Items can be deprecated when they are no longer active or in use. If the product or service has not been used in any transaction, it can then be deleted. Items that have been used in transactions cannot be deleted from DEAR. Deprecated items will no longer appear to be selected for purchase, sale, inventory or production operations. See Delete Products for more detailed information.


Deprecate a product or service:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products and click on the product record. 
  2. Change the status from ACTIVE to DEPRECATED
  3. Save your changes.


To deprecate multiple items at once, it is most convenient to use a CSV template. 


Deprecate multiple products or services at once:

  1. Export your supplier list by navigating to Inventory → Products and clicking Export → Inventory List (without descriptions). 
  2. Download and open the CSV template.
  3. In the Status column, change all items to be deprecated from ACTIVE to DEPRECATED
  4. On the products screen, click Import → Inventory List.
  5. Upload the edited template. 


Deprecated products can be deleted from DEAR if they have not yet been used in a purchase transaction. 


Delete deprecated products:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products.
  2. Click on More Actions → Delete deprecated products
  3. Click Delete to confirm. 


Merge Products

[back to top]


Multiple product/service records can be merged into a single product/service. 


NOTE: Merging products is not reversible. You will need to merge the same products in your accounting software.


Merge product/service records:

  1. Navigate to Inventory → Products
  2. Check boxes to indicate product records to merge. 
  3. Click More Actions → Merge selected products.
  4. Select the primary product record and click Merge to confirm.


NOTE: Product fields will take the value of the primary product record. All transactions involving merged products will now point to the primary product. If the merged products are linked to eCommerce channels, only the primary product link will be preserved. 


Customise the Product View Table

[back to top]


The Product View Table can be customised by clicking on the settings icon in the top-right corner. Each column can be sorted in ascending or descending order, and columns can be added to the table or removed from the table by checking/unchecking the boxes in the list.


You can reset the layout of the table if you have made any amendments to it previously by clicking Reset Layout.


Did you find it helpful? Yes No

Send feedback
Sorry we couldn't be helpful. Help us improve this article with your feedback.