Add a Product
To add a new product, browse to the category where the new product belongs and click New product Button.
Fill in the infomation specific to that product.
Some infomation is required, some information is optional and some is required depending on your store configuration.
An example would be if you charge shipping by weight, you need to add that information otherwise the store will not be able to work out the correct shipping costs.
There is a lot of information to add but a lot of options are rarely used (or already preconfigured when the store is created), here the short version that will cover 90% of stores. A full description of each field can be found below.
Items in red must be filled in.
Products Status: Set to In stock
Product Name: Must be filled in.
Product is Free: No
Product is Call for Price: No
Product Priced by Attributes: No
Tax Class: Set to Taxable.
Product Price: must be entered (Net/Gross the site will fill in the other field base on the current tax rate).
Product is Virtual: No
Always Free Shipping: No
Products Quantity Box Shows: If customer is likely to buy more than one of the same product select Yes, otherwise No. Product Qty Minimum: 1
Product Qty Maximum: 0
Product Qty Units: 1
Product Qty Min/Unit Mix: Yes
Products Description: Must be filled in
Products Quantity: If you keeping track of stock, enter the current stock quantity here.
Products Model: Must be filled in.
Products Image: Images are vital for a good store.
Products URL: No
Products Shipping Weight: If you are charging shipping by weight then enter weight here.
Sort Order: can be blank.
Once you have entered the required details press the preview button, you will be taken to a page which displays the information you have entered and the image you uploaded (if any).
If you are happy with the details click the insert button to add the product to the store.
Or click back to make amends to the products details.
Or cancel to remove the information and do not add the product to the site.
This section contain a more in depth explanation of each field.
Products Status
If a product is marked as Out of Stock the product will not appear in your store.
If you use stock figures in your store each time a product is sold, the value in the Products Quantity field will be decremented. When the Products Quantity field reaches zero, this field will automatically switch to Out of Stock.
Date Available
If the product is already in stock, leave this field empty.
If you specify a future date, a customer is still able to view and purchase the product.
The product will be displayed in the “Upcoming Products” list in your Store Front (if configured) and the product’s Product Info page will also highlight the date that the product will be in stock.(if configured)
Products Manufacturer
Allows you to specify the manufacturer of a product; e.g. if you sell cars, you can have Ford, Toyota, etc as the manufacturers.
You need to enter the list of manufacturers first before you can see any of your choices.
Refer to the “Manufacturers” sections.
Products Name
This is the name of the product that customers see.
Product is Free
Marking Yes will override all prices and discounts you have applied for the product and cause the product to be free! The customer will still see whatever discounts that were applied but will not be charged anything for the product during the checkout process.
Try not to specify a value for Products Price (Net) field if you do not want to confuse your customers when you set this field to Yes. This feature is good for occasions when you want to give away product samples to customers for them to try before they buy.
Product is Call for Price
Behaves similarly to “Product is Free” except that the product will have a “call for price” image instead. Customers also cannot add the product to cart.
Try not to specify a value for Products Price (Net) field if you do not want to confuse your customers if you set this field to Yes.
Product Priced by Attributes
If you choose to price your products based on attributes (color, size, etc), you can make use of this field to decide how you want to display your product prices.
Let us take the case where you sell a PC at a base price of £1000 with a default of 256MB RAM. You want to allow your customers to be able to add extra RAM via options to have 512MB (add £100) or 1GB (add £200).
If you set this option to No. Your product details will appear to your customers as follows.
Products Price £1000
256MB
512MB (+£100)
1GB (+£200)
If you set this option to Yes. Your product details will appear to your customers as follows.
Products Price starting at £1000
256MB (£1000)
512MB (£1100)
1GB (£1200)
Essentially, what this attribute does when set to Yes is to show the total price of a product with the prices of the attributes added; whereas if it were set to No, then prices are seen to be incremental. Which option you choose is entirely up to aesthetics and how you want to present your product pricing.
Tax Class
Allows you to automatically calculate the Products Price (Gross) value using the value you specify for the Products Price (Net) field, using the current VAT rate. Should be set to Taxable Goods.
Products Price (Net)
This is the base price of your product. It is usually your selling price.
Products Price (Gross)
This is the price of your product after applying the tax rate specified in the Tax Class field.
Product is Virtual
Normally you would specify No, Shipping Address Required if you need to ship any physical goods to your customers.
Always Free Shipping
Indicates whether you want to offer Free Shipping for this product. If you set it to No, Normal Shipping Rules, then all the rules you specified in your shipping modules will kick in.
Products Quantity Box Shows
If set to Yes, Show Quantity Box, the customer sees a box to enter the quantity of product they want to add to their basket.
If set to No the customer will just see an add to cart button.
Product Qty Minimum
Indicates the minimum number of items of a product a customer must buy. It is also commonly known as the “minimum order quantity” in layman terms.
If a customer enters less than the minimum quantity allowed, the system will display an error message prompting the customer to adjust the quantity.
This option is useful when you are offering an extremely low priced product which will only turn in a profit if a minimum number of items are sold.
Product Qty Maximum
Indicates the maximum number of items of a product a customer is allowed to buy.
If a customer enters more than the maximum quantity allowed, the system will automatically adjust the quantity to be equal to the maximum allowed quantity. This option is useful when you have products that are in high demand and you want to avoid angering your customers if one of them buys a large amount at one go thus depriving other customers of a chance to buy the product.
Product Qty Units
This option limits customers to purchasing in fixed quantities. For example, if you specify the value to be 5, then customers can only order in quantities of 5, 10, 15, etc.
The wording to potential customers may not be very intuitive though.
This option is useful when you have goods already packed neatly in fixed quantities. By not taking out the goods and selling separately, you can save yourself any leftover goods and maybe help your shipping costs as well.
Product Qty Min/Unit Mix
If you have defined custom attributes for a product, you can make use of this field to control what quantities of a product (based on attributes) customers are allowed to buy from your store.
Let’s say you sell canned tuna and have defined an attribute “flavor” with three possible values: curry sauce, tomato sauce and olive oil. Assume you have set up the following fields as follows:
Product Qty Minimum = 4
Product Qty Maximum = 12
Product Qty Units = 1
The above quantity settings mean the customers can only buy the canned tuna in quantities of: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12.
If Product Qty Min/Unit Mix is No. Besides adhering to the above quantity settings, customers are also limited to ordering tuna packed in one of the flavors only.
If Product Qty Min/Unit Mix is Yes. Although they still have to adhere to the above quantity settings, they are now allowed to mix-and-match the different flavors of tuna in different quantities e.g. 2 cans in curry sauce, 3 cans in tomato sauce and 7 cans in olive oil.
Products Description
Enter the description for your product here. Use the HTMLarea to enter and format your text to make your descriptions really stand out. Use the Plain Text editor if you plan to enter raw HTML source code or you just want to enter some text without any fancy formatting.
Products Quantity
If Stock tracking is used, product quantity indicates the amount of stock you have for the particular product. If you do not specify a value, it defaults to 0.
If a customer places an order (e.g. 4 units) for a product that has limited stock available (e.g. 1 unit left), a warning message will be displayed in the Shopping Cart page.
If all your units are sold, then Zen Cart automatically marks the Product Status as Out of Stock and disables the product.
The customer will not be able to see the product in your product catalog or anywhere in your Store Front if it is disabled.
If you enable the product by toggling the red button in the Categories/Products screen but still leave its Product Status as Out of Stock, then the customer will see a Sold Out sign instead of the usual Add to Cart button when viewing the product.
Products Model
Used to specify a model or reference number for your product. Customers can perform a search in your store based on a product’s model.
Products Image
To specify an image for the product, browse your computer for the required image.
Note the existence of two extra options for a product image compared to a category image.
For the Delete Image option:
Set to Yes if you want to disassociate the current image with the product. No new product image will be uploaded.
Set to No if you want to use another image with the product.
For the Overwrite Existing Image on Server option:
Set to Yes if you need to upload an image which has changed but still maintain the previous name or you simply want to upload a new image after clicking the Browse button.
Set to No if want to use an image which has already been uploaded via FTP to the desired directory on your server. You can type the name of the uploaded file in the filename field.
Products URL
Used to point a customer to another web site which might contain more information for the product. For example, you could use this link to provide a direct link to a manufacturers website, to provide more detailed information.
This should be used with caution as encouraging your customer to leave your site for another can lose you sales.
Products Weight
Allows you to specify a weight. The default weight is 0 if you leave this field blank. If you charge shipping by weight you must enter the weight here.
Sort Order
Specifies the sequence in which this product should be displayed. Default is 0.