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Products — overview

Every product in SKU.io is a single record that ties together its identity, how it's organized, what it costs and sells for, how it's measured and stored, and — for products that hold stock — its live inventory. The catalog is the foundation the rest of the system builds on: sales orders, purchase orders, transfers, assemblies, listings, and reports all point back at a product. Get the catalog right and everything downstream lines up.

You reach the catalog from the Products area of the left navigation. The products list is your home base — search, filter, and open any product to its detail page, where every facet lives on its own tab. Global definitions that products draw on — brands, categories, attributes, pricing tiers, units of measure, cost categories — are managed once under Settings and then assigned per product.

This page orients you to the model and points you at the right task. Stock quantities, opening balances, FIFO layers, and COGS are the job of the Inventory guide — this section covers the product record itself.

What a product is​

A product carries several kinds of information, each with its own guide:

Product types​

Every product is one of six types, and the type decides whether it holds its own stock and how it behaves on an order. This is the single most important distinction in the catalog, so it has its own concept page: Product types explained.

TypeHolds inventory?On an order
StandardYesSells as one line against its own stock.
KitYesSells as one line and carries its own stock, but is assembled from components.
BlemishedYesA condition-graded copy of a standard product with its own stock and SKU.
ManufacturedYesBuilt through BOMs and assemblies.
BundleNoExplodes into its component lines at sale; holds no stock of its own.
MatrixNoA parent container for variations; the child variants hold stock, not the parent.

Only standard, kit, blemished, and manufactured products carry a stock ledger and FIFO cost — the inventory-bearing types. Bundle and matrix are structural: a bundle is priced and sold but sources its stock from its components, and a matrix is a grouping whose variations are the real stock-keeping records.

Types aren't fully interchangeable once a product has history. Converting an inventory-bearing type to a non-inventory one (bundle or matrix) is blocked the moment any FIFO layer or movement exists — even a stock-take-only product — and a product with sale or assembly movements can't change type at all. The one always-allowed conversion is standard to kit. See Convert & auto-detect product types for the rules and the type-change guards.

Everyday tasks​

Most catalog work is a handful of tasks you return to:

Archiving hides a product from everyday lists while keeping all its history; it cascades to a matrix product's variations. Deleting is permanent and is blocked whenever the product is still referenced by orders or movements — the list's inline check tells you truthfully whether a product can be deleted before you try. See Archive, unarchive & delete.

Organize with taxonomy​

Two systems classify products, and both are defined once in Settings and then assigned per product:

  • Brands label who makes or markets a product. Manage the list under Manage brands; assign one from a product's overview.
  • Categories form a hierarchy — a tree of parent and child nodes with a path and levels. A product has one primary category and any number of additional ones. See Manage categories and How product taxonomy works.
  • Attributes are custom properties (text, number, dropdown, and more) you attach to products, optionally bundled into attribute groups and applied through categories. See Manage attributes and Manage attribute groups.

On a product, categories and attributes live together on the Taxonomy tab. The reference pages cover attribute fields & types and the taxonomy model in full.

Price, measure, and store​

Cost categories, which classify landed and other costs, are managed under Manage cost categories. Unit cost and average cost themselves come from the FIFO ledger — see FIFO layers & COGS in the Inventory guide.

Kits and bundles​

Kits and bundles both group components, but they behave oppositely: a kit is assembled and sells as one stock-keeping line, while a bundle stays virtual and explodes into its component lines at sale. The difference and its downstream effects are explained in Kits vs bundles, and bundle revenue splitting in Bundle pricing & revenue proration.

You build and convert both in the Workshop, which can also auto-detect likely bundles and kits by naming patterns and batch-convert them. Component rules — allowed component types, minimum quantities, nesting, and circular-reference prevention — are in the kit & bundle component reference.

Keep the catalog healthy​

As a catalog grows, maintenance tools keep it clean:

Guides in this section​

Find, create & edit

Classify & describe

Price, measure & store

Kits, bundles & variants

Images, import & maintenance

Understand the model​

Once you've worked your first few tasks, these guides explain how the pieces fit together:

Reference​

Stock lives in the Inventory guide

A product's quantities, opening balance, FIFO layers, and COGS are documented separately in the Inventory guide. Start with browsing the product inventory list or viewing a product's stock, and see Stock states for how On Hand, Available, Allocated, On Hold, and Non-Sellable are derived.

Channel listings are a separate area

Publishing a product to Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, or WooCommerce — and syncing listing price and stock back — is handled by listings and channel integrations, covered in the Listings guide (coming soon). The catalog owns the product record; listings own how it appears on each channel. See Products, channels & reporting for the seam.

Next steps​

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