As part of our ongoing QNews series (previous articles are linked below), we’re sharing more helpful tips on setting up QPro for your business. After completing the setup of Company, Locations, Employees, Sales Tax, Sales Tax Table, Product Types, Labor Types, Customer Accounts, Vendor Accounts, and the Contact Manager, you’ll then move on to setting up the Product Catalog.
Product Catalog Overview:
The product catalog in QPro is an essential part of our software. It helps streamline your workflow and ensures accurate product data. Many functions in QPro depend on the catalog's product information, such as writing up an accurate sales order, creating a purchase order, or maintaining inventory.
Due to the importance of maintaining the integrity of the product catalog, we strongly recommend assigning someone detail-oriented and accountable to create and maintain it. Failing to control permissions over who can create and edit products may lead to duplicate entries, disorganized products, and erroneous data and pricing. That in turn will make it difficult to search for products from the sales order screen or have reliable pricing. A messy product catalog can result in frustration and a time-consuming cleanup process.
In addition to finding the right person(s) to maintain the product catalog within your company, we have a resource on our training site called Recommended Description Name Patterns. If you click on “Description Name Patterns” there's a document that gives some recommendations on how to name things such as your roll, soft goods, hard surfaces, etc., as well as strategies you should implement when it comes to naming and choosing the description for a product.
In the video below, we will show you how to manually set up a product in the product catalog and search the product catalog.
One way to get products into the catalog is by manually adding them. You can also update the catalog quickly and efficiently through the B2B process. This B2B video will guide you through the B2B setup process to prepare for importing to the product catalog.
Terms and Fields in the Product Catalog
In the Product Catalog video embedded above it goes into more detail about the following items:
Three different parameters define a product in QPro:
- The Manufacturer
- The Description (Style) – the list of descriptions or styles that go along with a specific manufacturer
- The Color – the list of colors that go along with a specific description (style)
“Export Catalog” button: This will export to a CSV file all of the descriptions and colors that are associated with the manufacturer that is currently selected. You must choose a manufacturer to export data.
“Export Price List” button: This will export the price list to a PDF.
The “Short Name” field is very important and used in other program parts. Some manufacturer names might become very long, so we allow you to put in a two- or three-letter description so that the name will be shorter and visible elsewhere.
“Private Name” field: Some operations require private labels. This can be useful when printing out tagging, sales orders, and other similar items, because you can print the private label instead of the actual name used by the supplier. This makes it more difficult for customers to price shop.
“Description #” field: This is not required and can be another identifier.
The “Product Type” field is required to save a product. To learn more about product types, see our Setup Product Types Video.
“Price” field: In this field you can select a specific retail price formula, put in an exact amount (ie: $9.99), or if you have a zero in this field, the pricing formulas will automatically be selected. See the retail price video below for more information.
Training Videos and Customer Support
As you continue setting up QPro, it will be helpful to keep these training videos handy via this link (or you can also access them in QPro by clicking on the “?” found in the top right corner). We want you to feel supported as you set up QPro. In addition to the training videos, our support department is here as a resource for you as well. Our support department’s QPro training goes above and beyond what other flooring software products offer. There are many ways to connect with support - keep this article bookmarked for support and training options.
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