Beyond just services, your business may also sell retail items to your clients. BusyPaws makes it easy to track your retail items, add new items as needed, and sell products to your clients in a variety of ways. In this guide we will explore how to locate your products list as well as how to manually add and edit products.

To find your products list, start by clicking or hovering your mouse over the ellipses icon in the left-hand menu bar, then select "Products".

Note that you can also get to the products list by selecting the gear icon at the bottom-left corner of the page.

Then select "Products" under the "Product Configuration" section.

Your main Manage Products page includes a list of all the products you have created for your BusyPaws account. Each product is listed with its name, number of variants (if any), price, assigned category, and the date on which it was last updated.

By default, the product list is sorted alphabetically. Click any of the blue column headers to adjust the sorting criteria. When default sorting is in place all headers will display normally. If a specific header has been selected to sort the list, the chosen header will have a small arrow icon next to it. Select the same header again to change the order from descending to ascending (or vice versa).

Use the search bar and filters at the top of the page to locate a specific product. Products may be located by name, brand, or category.

Click on the name of any product to see more details about it.

To manually create a new product, start by selecting the "Actions" button at the top of your main Products & Inventory page, then choosing "New Product" from the drop-down menu.

The New Product page includes fields for a variety of product attributes.

When adding a brand, category, or vendor, selecting the field opens a drop-down with existing options. Select an option from the drop-down menu to assign it to the product. If you have many categories/brands/vendors, you may type the name you are looking for into the search bar at the top of the drop-down to narrow the listed results.

To create and assign a new category/brand/vendor, type the new name into the field and click "Add [Name]" to create the category/brand/vendor and assign it to your new product.

Products may also be broken down into variants. The next section of this guide takes a closer look at what that means.

When you are happy with the attributes and variant settings you have configured for your new product, click the "Create Product" button at the bottom of the page to save your selections.

A variant refers to one of a subset of products that fall under the same name/title. Examples include a specific type of collar that comes in different colours and sizes, or a specific type of food that comes in a few different weights. Though you can certainly set up completely separate products for each of the retail items sold by your business, variants can be a useful way to group different versions of the same product together.

The settings for a product's variants can be found in the "Variants" section at the bottom of the New/Edit Product page.

When creating or editing a product, you can generate variants by turning the "This product has multiple options" toggle on (purple).

Switching the toggle on populates a subsection with options for creating variants.

Click the "Add Variant" option to populate additional trait fields to describe the differences between the variants of the product.

Note that each product can have up to 3 trait options to describe variants.

Each trait is described by its Option Name, indicating the type of variation (i.e. colour, size, flavour, etc.), and the Options themselves (i.e. blue, purple, green; small, medium, large; etc.). Click the trash can icon to the right of any line to remove that trait and its associated options.

Selecting either option field opens a drop-down menu with existing traits/descriptors. Choose an option from the drop-down or type a new one and select "Add [Option]" to assign that value to the field. Note that the Option Name field can have only one value assigned, while the Options field may have many.

Lets take a look at an example of how variants might be used. In this example, we are looking to add dog collars to our system. These collars come in several sizes as well as different colours and widths.

To start, we will name our product Dog Collar and add a short description that will apply to all the variants of this product, regardless of size or colour. We will also add a base price for the product. Since there are multiple variations on this item, each with their own barcode, we will leave the SKU field blank.

We will then assign the Apparel category, add the brand name, and select a vendor, since these will likewise apply to all of our variants.

Once we've set the base attributes for our product, we can tackle the variants. To start, we will turn the multiple option toggle on.

Since the collars we are adding vary in three different ways (size, colour, width), we will click the "Add Variant" button two times to add the two extra trait lines.

We can now add our three traits and their associated options. On the first line we will enter Size with options Small, Medium, and Large. On the second line we will enter Colour with options Blue, Purple, and Green. On the third line we will enter Width with options 1" and 2".

As we add variant options to the product, all resulting variants will be listed below.

After clicking the "Create Product" button to save our selection, we will see our new Dog Collar item on the products list. Next to the product's name we can see that it has 18 variants (3 sizes x 3 colours x 2 widths = 18).

If we select the name of the product, we can see details about all of the variants that were created. We can then adjust the price, add a SKU, or upload a picture for each variant individually. For more information on that process, check out the Editing Existing Products section of this help guide.

Once you have added one or more products to your BusyPaws account, whether by creating them manually or importing them from a CSV file, you can make adjustments to their attributes at any time. Click the name of any product on your Products list to open the Edit Product page.

The Edit Product page includes all the same fields as the New Product page, including the product name, description, default price, product image, category, brand, vendor, and variant options.

After making any edits, be sure to click the "Update Product" button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.

If your product has any variants, you can use the option fields above the variants list to add or remove any traits/options.

When adding/removing traits, changes to the impacted variants will be flagged with red "To Be Removed" or green "To Be Created" tags in the variant list.

You may also click the pencil icon next to any listed variant to edit its specific attributes. Clicking the trash can icon instead removes that variant altogether.

When editing a variant there are a variety of fields available that are specific to the chosen variant. Click the image field or drag and drop and file to add an image for the variant. Use the Price field to adjust the variant's price as needed, and add the barcode number for the variant to its SKU field.

It is also possible to adjust the trait options from the variant on this page. Note that changes made to traits when editing a specific variant will impact any other variants to which that trait is assigned.

After making any desired updates to the variant's attributes, click the "Update Variant" button to finalize your selections.

Select any of the other variants to navigate to its settings page or click on the listed inventory for the variant to go to your inventory list for the item.

Brands, categories, and vendors allow you to organize your products. Though you can add brands/categories/vendors when creating or editing your products, you may find yourself needing to manage the options you have configured. To add, edit, or delete the brands/categories/vendors for your products, start by selecting the "Actions" button at the top of your Manage Products page, then choosing "Settings" from the drop-down.

This page defaults to your brands list. Use the tabs at the top of the page to get to the appropriate list. Tab options include "Manage Brands", "Manage Categories", and "Manage Vendors".

Once you have selected the appropriate tab, you will see a list of options and the number of products associated with each.

Select the product count to see a list of the included products.

Click the name of the brand/category/vendor to edit it.

Once you have made the desired changes to the brand/category/vendor name, click the "Update [Item]" button to save your changes.

A lot goes into managing your products and inventory. For more information on the various aspects of this functionality on your BusyPaws account, check out the following help guides: