Products

Overview

The products page is where you can find, view, edit, delete and add products for your store.  This is the primary way that you and others will manage your product catalog.  Using this area, you can manage every aspect of the various products in your store.

Requirements

The following prerequisites will be necessary to accomplish the goals of this article:

• Have access to your Hotcakes store administration
• Basic understanding of your products and product attributes

Getting Started

There is nothing you need to do in order to proceed with this article.

Managing Products

Click the “Catalog” menu item in the control panel and then click “Products.”

The main Product page shows you a list of currently configured products.  You'll see a count of the total number of products being returned at the moment, and below the grid you may see a button to allow you to remove the sample products from your site.  This button will only appear if one or more of those sample products or categories are detected.

Column	Description
[no name]	You'll either see the primary image you've uploaded for your product here, or a placeholder for products that don't yet have a primary image specified.  Clicking on this image will take you to the product editing area.
Name	This is the product name that you've specified in the product details edit view.  It's the most common name that you and your customers will see as it relates to this product.
SKU	The SKU is the primary tracking number that most store owners and merchants will use to identify the product.  You've specified this in the product details view as well.
Price	This is the value you defines to be the site price for the product.  You may also see this as the "Price" in the product details and it's sometimes referred to as the base price.
[no name]	This is an editing column, allowing you to the manage the respective product.  The first icon allows you to edit the product the same as if you clicked on the product image.  The second option allows you to permanently remove the product from the store.

Product Search

There is a product search in the left panel which allows you to determine the products displayed in the panel on the right.  It has several options available to help you find exactly what you're looking for.  Hitting <Enter> when entering a search term will refresh the grid on the right, as will selecting anything in any of the drop down lists.  

This is the same product search that you will find throughout the administration area, so it will remember the search you've recently used in places like the promotions area.

Setting	Description
Keyword	Enter any term you would like to filter your product catalog listing. The search term is used the same as it is elsewhere in the frontend and backend of Hotcakes, following the same rules of indexed and value in the search logic.
Type	This drop down list will be populated with all of the product types that have been created for your store.  If you had previously selected a product type here or elsewhere, it will still be selected here.
Category	This drop down list will be populated with all of the categories that have been created for your store, except any that have been marked as inactive.  If you had previously selected a category here or elsewhere, it will still be selected here.
Manufacturer	This drop down list will be populated with all of the manufacturers that have been created for your store.  If you had previously selected a manufacturer here or elsewhere, it will still be selected here.
Vendor	This drop down list will be populated with all of the vendors that have been created for your store.  If you had previously selected a vendor here or elsewhere, it will still be selected here.
Status	If Any Status is selected, then all products will be shown regardless of status.  If Active is selected, then only those products that are active will be shown.  Disabled will only show productst that aren't active.  Like the other drop down lists, this will remember the previous selection.
Inventory Status	When Any Inventory Status is selected, products will not be filtered based on their inventory levels.  Not Available will only show products that are disabled based upon their inventory settings and level.  Available only shows product that are still shown based upon their inventory settings and level.  When you select Low Inventory, the products will be filtered to only show those that have reached their low inventory levels that you defined for each product.

Product Action Buttons

The product search described above helps you to filter the products in the grid to show exactly what you're looking for.  These buttons allow you to take further action on the products and the catalog.  

Setting	Description
Add New Product	Clicking this button will allow you to create a brand new product in your catalog.  You'll be taken immediately to the product details edit view.
Import from Excel	You'll find more details about importing products in other areas of the documentation.  This button will bring you to the product import view.
Export to Excel	When you click this button, the current listing of products will be saved to an Excel file.  This is regardless to whether your search has returned 5 or 5,000 products.  The resulting Excel spreadsheet will contain all of the products matching the search.  Again, more detailed information about exporting products will be found elsewhere in the documentation.

Special Use Cases

When you combine the features in this page, you can end up being able to do a large number of things, including reporting on your products.  For example, by selecting the low inventory filter and exporting the product listing, you'll now have a low inventory report to send to your fulfillment, warehouse, or inventory control departments.  We invite you to get as creative as you'd like with these features to suit your business' unique needs.