The Products page is where you will see all of your Products that have been created in MarginEdge. When invoices are processed, our team looks at each food or beverage Vendor Item and either matches it to an existing Product, or creates a new one if no appropriate one exists. If your restaurant shares a Concept with other units, you will be sharing one Product list for all locations.
*Click here to learn more about the Company - Concept relationship.
Remember, one Product can have multiple Vendor Items associated with it. If you shop around for the best price, that's easy for our system -- all purchases can all be associated with one Product for easy counting and reporting! Want to learn more: How are Vendor Items and Products related?
Finding Your Products
When you go to Products > View All Products in the left hand navigation bar, you will see your full Product database.
You can search and filter your view a variety of ways using the Search Bar, or by selecting the "Category Type" or the "Category" to limit what you are seeing. You also have two options to export this data, found under "More Options".
If you are part of a mulit-unit group, then you will see the option to "DISPLAY Purchased products for this restaurant". Since linked restaurants share a product database, you will see all products for all units here unless you switch that toggle.
Below is a brief description of the columns you see. Note that you can always click on a column header to sort the full dataset by that column in either ascending or descending order.
- Name - the generic Product name that may be used for a variety of Vendor Items
- Category - the Category that associated with that Product used for reporting purposes
- Accounting Code - the Product's Category is mapped to the GL Code/account in your accounting system; if your accounting system uses codes, they will be listed here
- Item Count - this is how many unique Vendor Items are associated with this Product
- On Inventory - is this Product currently on an inventory Count Sheet?
- Tax Exempt - is this Product set to be taxable or tax exempt?
- Report by Unit - this is the Unit of Measure in which the product is inventoried (formerly "count by")
- Latest Price - this shows the most recent price you paid when purchasing this item (if you share a product database with other units, this price will be specific to your purchases and will show $0 if you haven't purchased it)
Editing Your Products
With Restaurant Admin or [me]Admin permissions, you are able to update/edit products. You are able to edit a Product's name, Category, Add/Remove from Inventory, adjust the Vendor Item associated with it, and change the Unit of Measure.
Go to Products > View all Products and find and click on the Product in question. Click on the "Edit Product" button to make any changes.
See below for instructions on each part of this editing page along with associated links to further information about the topic.
- Name - You can edit or update the name of a product
*Product names should not be abbreviations or nicknames! - Category - You can edit or add a category. A product can be split across multiple categories, but cannot switch back and forth between categories.
[How to Change a Product's Category] - Tax Exempt - Check this box if you are not required to pay taxes for this product
[Making Products Tax Exempt] - Should be inventoried - Check this box if you intend to inventory the product
- Count Sheets - With the previous box checked (#4), you can now indicate which count sheet(s) you want this product on.
[Count Sheets] - See this Product on Reports - How do you want to see this product on your reports?
[How to change the count by unit of measure of a product] - Reassign - If the vendor item you see here should belong to a different product, you can click to "Reassign" to choose the correct product. (Similarly, the small link under the vendor items allows you to add a missing vendor item to this product.)
[How to Fix a Vendor Item Associated with the Wrong Product || What is the association between a Vendor Item & Product?] - Units Counted on Inventory - here is where you have the ability to add multiple count-by units so you can count a product on your inventory multiple ways
[Adding Multiple Count-bys on Products] - Unit of Measure – this is where you add any conversions needed for your recipes.
A conversion is needed when how you count or measure the product differs from how you purchase it.
[Recipe Conversions] - Manage Allergens - Once allergens have been added in the Recipe > Setup, then you can add them here to a product
[Getting Started with Recipes, scroll to the bottom] - Price Details - Price Details is a history of the price changes.
- History - History is where you can see who made changes to the products.
SAVE - Don't forget to SAVE YOUR WORK!
Don't forget that you can keep a watchful eye on new Product Categories through the Product > New Vendor Item Review page.
To add a new Product please follow these steps: How to add products in MargineEdge