Once you have more than a few dozen products, finding the right one starts to take time. Categories fix that by grouping products the way you already think about your shop. Custom fields solve a different problem: recording details that matter to your trade and that Tabs doesn't ask for by default.
Categories
Go to Categories and press Add category. Give it a name, like Drinks, Shoes or Baby products. That's all a category needs.
Categories inside categories
A category can hold other categories. Shoes can hold Sneakers, Sandals and School shoes. Drinks can hold Soft drinks, Water and Juice.
To build this, press Add subcategory on a category, or create a category and choose where it goes. You can nest up to 10 levels deep, though two or three is plenty for most shops.
A product in Sneakers also counts as being in Shoes. So the number beside Shoes includes everything under it.
Putting products into categories
Pick the category when you add or edit a product. On the Products page, use the category filter to see only what's in it. Filtering by Shoes shows the Sneakers and Sandals too.
Renaming and moving
Rename a category whenever you like. Its products stay in it and any links to it keep working.
Use Move to put a category somewhere else in the tree. Everything under it moves with it, and its products stay in it. Tabs won't offer a place that makes no sense, such as inside itself.
Deleting
When you delete a category, its subcategories go too. Tabs tells you what's inside before you confirm, including whether any products are in it. Read that message. If products are in the category, move them somewhere else first so they don't end up ungrouped.
Seeing how your products are spread
The Categories page has two views. List shows the tree with a product count beside each category. Spread draws the same thing as a picture: each block is a category, sized by how many products it holds.
Click a block to look inside it. Click one with no subcategories to open its products.
Spread is a quick way to notice that half your catalogue sits in one category that ought to be split, or that a category you set up has nothing in it.
How to choose your categories
Group products the way a customer asks for them, not the way your supplier's invoice lists them. If people come in asking for "something for a baby", Baby products is a category.
Keep the top level short. Eight to twelve top-level categories is easy to scan. Thirty is not.
Custom fields
Tabs asks for the things every shop needs: name, price, stock. Your trade probably has its own. A pharmacy needs an expiry date and a batch number. A phone shop needs an IMEI. A fabric seller might want width.
Custom fields let you add these yourself.
Adding a field
Go to Custom fields and press Add field. Give it a name and choose what kind of value it holds, such as text or a number.
Choose the kind carefully. It can't be changed later. If you might ever need letters in it, make it text.
Filling it in
Once a field exists, every product in your business can have a value for it. You fill it in when you add or edit a product. A product that doesn't need the field just leaves it empty.
For a product with sizes or colours, a field can work in one of two ways:
- Shared. The same value for every variant. The brand of a shirt is the same in every size.
- Per variant. A different value for each. Each size might have its own weight.
A field is one or the other on a given product, not both.
Renaming and deleting
Renaming a field keeps every value already entered.
Deleting a field removes its value from every product that had one. The products themselves stay. There's no undo for this, so be sure you no longer need the information.
Good fields to start with
| Trade | Fields worth adding |
|---|---|
| Pharmacy | Expiry date, batch number |
| Provisions and groceries | Expiry date, pack size |
| Phones and electronics | IMEI or serial number, warranty period |
| Fashion | Material, care instructions |
| Cosmetics | Expiry date, shade code |
Add fields only for things you'll actually fill in. Five fields your staff complete every time are worth more than fifteen they skip.
Who can do this
Categories and custom fields each have their own permissions. Someone might be allowed to put products in categories without being allowed to create or delete the categories themselves. If a button described here is missing for you, your role doesn't include it.