Setting Up Products in Product-Categories, and Product-Catalogs

This section introduces some ideas about using the Catalog Manager data hierarchy to manage all of the companies products or services, either those sold, or those purchased, or consumed.

The Catalog Manager Data Hierarchy

Keep in mind the hierarchy of data entities when planning to enter Product information into the Catalog Manager.

• The WebSite Store(s) and the Physical Store(s) mirror opentaps Virtual Store(s)
• The Virtual Store(s) Use the Catalog(s)
• The Catalog(s) Contain the Categories
• The Categories Contain Product Information and any Sub-Categories
• The Product Information is entered into Product Pages in Catalog Manager.

Applying the Catalog Manager Hierarchy

All products and materials managed in opentaps will have such entries in the Catalog Manager, and those entries will reside in one or more hierarchies of data. It is often convenient to organize the data in Catalog Manager around two types of business activity:

1. Products for Sale -- Any kind of Product sold by the business
2. Products Purchased -- Any kind of Product used or consumed in the business

This data organization facilitates management transparency because it clearly separates the Sales related accounting data from data that pertains to costs of internal production or of internal operations.

Using A Purchased Products Hierarchy

When the Catalog Manager data hierarchy is used for products used or consumed in the business, it is interpreted in a slightly different way as shown here:

NOTE: Even though there may not be any Store(s) at the top level, 
opentaps will use a Virtual Store(s) at the top of the hierarchy anyway.  
You can name the top level Virtual Store anything that you like.

• Internal WebSite(s) or Internal (dummy) Store(s) mirror opentaps Virtual Store(s)
• The Virtual Store(s) Use the Catalog(s) of materials and products used inside the business
• The Catalog(s) Contain the Categories
• The Categories Contain Product Information and any Sub-Categories
• The Product Information is entered into Product Pages in Catalog Manager.

Preparing Data for Entry

A recommended way to prepare for data entry into Catalog Manager is to follow this outline:

• Prepare a concept or maybe a simple sketch of the hierarchy you will implement
  • Show the number of store(s), website store(s) or internal "stores" to be used
  • Show the Catalogs used in each store
  • Show the Categories of your products, such as
    • Product of category (a) for sale, plus any sub-categories
    • Product of category (x) for sale. . .
    • Products purchased to manufacture Products of some type
    • Products purchased for value add and then resale of a type
    • Products purchased for use in administrative and operations overhead
    • Product commodities purchased for consumption internally
  • Summarize the individual products or sets of products to be managed, there might be many of these but this is just a concept sketch of what you are doing.

When you actually start entering data into Catalog Manager, you can either work from the Top-Down in the hierarchy, or you can work from the Bottom-Up in the hierarchy. Notice that if you work Top-Down you will have prepared all of the entities before you need to use them to capture any entity data content items. This might simplify your process of entering all the data.

Preparing Data for Import Into Catalog Manager

For a discussion of how to build a data import process for your catalog data, this article which is written for the Technical System Administrator to aid in build a custom process, should be of help:

    Importing Data with Dataimport

<< Using_Category_Sub-Tabs_Step-By-Step >> Manual Pages >> Using_Categories_for_Web-Site_Store_Presentation_Control

Working_with_Products_in_the_Catalog << Section Pages >> Working_with_the_Product_Store(s)