Create products, options, and inventory

Choose New product, enter a name and choose whether it is a physical item or a file people download. The product is added as a draft and its page opens, where you set its price, description and images, and add the files of a digital product. A physical product requires shipping. A digital product is delivered as files to download, and can give each buyer a licence key; it is not shipped. See Sell digital products, files and licence keys. A gift card is a third kind, with amounts instead of a price; see Store gift cards and store credit. A bundle is a fourth, made of products you already sell; see Sell bundles of products. A course is a fifth, made from its course in Courses with Sell this course, never with New product. Its page has a Course band that opens the course; it sells one at a time, has no shipping or stock of its own, and cannot be duplicated in Store. See Sell a course.

The Products list shows 50 products at a time. See Find products and Edit many products at once.

A new product's page lists what it still needs under Finish this product, such as an image or a price, until it can go live and count toward Store setup.

Product details

Product details holds the description, the product's address in the Store (which cannot change once the product has been live), whether it requires shipping, its shipping profile (see Collections and shipping), whether it is featured (featured products appear before other products in the Store) and Publish automatically.

Options such as size and colour

A product without options is one item with one price. To sell versions such as sizes or colours, choose Options on the product's page, then Add option. Name the option, such as Size, and use Add choice for each version, such as S, M and L. Add another option, such as Colour, the same way, then choose Save options. Each combination of choices becomes an item customers choose. Give each active item its price, optional compare-at price, cost per item, SKU, weight and stock setting on Price and inventory. Cost per item is what one costs you; customers never see it. Weight is the shipping weight of one item in grams.

Price and stock

On the page of a product without options, click its Price to change it. Edit prices, stock and barcodes opens Price and inventory, where the item's other values, or every combination of a product with options, are changed and saved together.

Track stock stops sales when available stock reaches zero, unless Sell when out of stock is on (see Back orders and pre-orders). For sale controls whether an item can be chosen. Reserved quantities protect items during active checkout and can temporarily make less stock available than the on-hand number suggests.

Stock history, on a physical product's page, lists every change to its stock: opening stock, sales, restocks after refunds, stock received, and corrections, each with the quantity after it and who made it. Use Record a stock change to add stock received or remove damaged, lost or returned items: choose the item, the change, the quantity and the reason. Stock received can also take the cost per item and the supplier's Invoice or delivery note number. Other asks What happened, because the reason alone does not say. The history shows the number or what happened with the change. Stock received at a cost changes the cost per item to the weighted average of the stock on hand and the stock received; for example, 10 at 4.00 and 5 more at 7.00 make 5.00. Changing a stock number on Price and inventory is recorded as a stock count correction. Stock cannot go below zero or below what checkouts in progress hold, except for a variant that sells when out of stock.

Each sale records the item's cost per item at that moment, so an order keeps the cost of what it sold even after the cost changes. A refunded item that is restocked returns at the cost it sold for.

Pay what you want

Give a variant a Minimum price on Price and inventory to let customers choose what they pay. The product page then asks for Your price, filled in with the variant's Price, which becomes the suggested amount. Customers can pay the minimum or more; a lower amount is refused when they add it to the cart. Leave Minimum price empty for a fixed price. The price cannot be below the minimum.

If you raise the minimum after a customer added the item to their cart, checkout asks them to add it again with a new amount. Discounts never lower an amount a customer chose, though free shipping still applies to the order. The order page marks the item Price chosen by the customer.

Personalisation

Personalisation on a product's page lists what customers fill in when they buy it, such as an engraving or a gift message. Choose Add field, give it a name and choose what customers fill in:

• Short text: one line, up to 50 characters unless you change it (at most 200).
• Long text: several lines, up to 500 characters unless you change it (at most 2,000).
• Choice from a list: up to 50 choices, separated by commas. Customers do not see the field until it has a choice.
• Date.

Click a field's values to change them: its name, what it takes, Optional or Required, its length or choices, and No extra charge or an added price. The added price is charged for each item the field is filled in for. Drag a field, or use its arrows, to change the order. A product can have up to 10 fields. Customers cannot upload images.

What a customer enters is checked when they add the item to their cart and again at checkout, so a field you make required later must be filled in before they can pay. The same product with different personalisation is a separate line in the cart. The order keeps what the customer entered and each field's name and price at the time, and shows it on the order page, packing slips, order emails and the customer's own order page. Removing a field does not change orders already placed.

Back orders and pre-orders

Turn on Sell when out of stock for a variant on Price and inventory to keep selling it after its stock runs out, for a back order or for a product that is not released yet. It needs Track stock. An Expected to ship date is optional; customers see it on the product page, in the cart and checkout, and on their order and its emails.

Stock goes below zero as these items sell, and checkouts in progress still hold what they take. Stock you receive afterwards counts up from there. Payment is taken when the customer orders.

An order records how many of each item were not in stock when it was placed. On Orders, the Pre-orders tab lists every order with such items, and each one is marked Pre-order in the list.

Product type, vendor and tags

On a product's page, Organization has three values you click to change:

• Product type is your own kind of product, such as T-shirt or Mug. It is separate from whether the product is physical or digital.
• Vendor is who makes it. Search engines are told it is the brand.
• Tags are words separated by commas, such as linen, summer. A product can have up to 30 tags.

Shoppers can filter the Store by product type, vendor (shown as Brand) and tag, and automatic collections can match them. Searching the storefront or the Products list also finds products by their type, vendor, tags and SKUs.

To add or remove a tag on several products, tick them in the Products list (see Edit many products at once).

Tags in the More menu on Products lists every tag in the Store with how many products have it. Click a tag's name to rename it on every product, or delete it from every product. Renaming a tag also changes automatic collection rules that match it.

Specifications and size chart

Specifications are name and value pairs shown on the product page, such as Material: 100% linen. Choose Add specification, then click a name or value to change it. Drag a row, or use its arrows, to change the order. A product can have up to 50 specifications.

Size chart is a table shown under a Size chart heading on the product page. Write one row per line and separate the columns with |, or paste cells copied from a spreadsheet. The first line is the header row:

Size | Chest | Length
S | 96 | 70
M | 102 | 72

Barcode, HS code and country of origin

Price and inventory has a Barcode for each variant (a GTIN, UPC, EAN or ISBN, or your own code), and for physical products an HS code (the customs tariff code, such as 6109.10) and the two-letter country the item was made in. A barcode of 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits is given to search engines as the product's GTIN.

Search engines

Search engines on a product's page sets the title and description search results show. When they are empty, the product's name and description are used. They are also used when the product's link is shared.

Each Store has a sitemap at /shop/{your store address}/sitemap.xml listing the Store, its published collections and its live products. You can submit it in a search engine's webmaster tools. Product pages give search engines the price, currency, availability, SKU and barcode of each variant.

Purchase limits

Most per order limits how many of a product one order can hold, counting every choice of the product together. Most per customer limits how many one email address can buy across all its paid orders and checkouts in progress at your Store. Empty means no limit. The cart refuses a quantity over the limit per order, and the product page shows the limit.

Publish at a set time

On a product that is not live, Publish automatically under Product details takes a date and time in your own time zone. At that time the product goes live with the same checks as Make live. If it cannot (for example, it has no image or no price), it stays a draft and the row says why. Clear the value to cancel.

Find products

The row above the Products list chooses which products it shows, each with how many it holds: All (every product except archived ones), Live, Drafts, Needs attention and Archived. Needs attention lists live products that have no image, that cannot be bought (no price, or sold out and not selling on back order) or that have an item at or below its reorder point, and drafts that could not go live at their scheduled time.

Search finds products by name, description, product type, vendor, tag or SKU. The filters narrow the list by tag, collection, stock (in stock, low stock, out of stock or stock not tracked) and whether a product has an image and a price. Filters for the kind of product, the product type and the vendor appear once your products use more than one. Clear filters removes every filter and the search. Display sorts the list by newest, recently updated, name, price or lowest stock.

The page's address holds the list's view, search, filters, sort and page, so you can bookmark it or send it to someone on your team. Products at the top of a product's page goes back to the list as you left it.

Each row shows the product's first image, whether it is live, a draft or archived, what it still needs (such as an image or a price), its stock and its price or range of prices.

On a keyboard, J and K move between products, O or Enter opens one, / goes to the search, X ticks the highlighted product, Esc clears the choice, T adds tags to the chosen products and N starts a new product. Keyboard shortcuts, or the ? key, lists them.

Edit many products at once

Tick products in the Products list, or tick the box at the top of the list to choose every product on the page. Hold Shift and tick a second product to tick every product between the two. When the whole page is chosen and the list has more pages, Select all with the number of products chooses every product that matches the view, search and filters, on every page; untick any you want to leave out. One change can cover up to 5,000 products. Moving to another page of the list starts a new choice.

The bar above the list says how many products are chosen and what you can do with them:

• Make live puts the chosen products in your store, after asking. A product without an image or a price, or a digital product without its file, stays a draft. The list names each one with the reason and leaves it ticked.
• Remove from store makes live products drafts again, and Archive removes products from your store. Both ask first, and orders keep their records. On Archived, Restore as drafts brings products back as drafts.
• Add tags, and in More, Remove tags, Add to collection, Remove from collection, Set vendor and Set product type change the products straight away. The message afterwards has Undo, which puts back what that change did on products nobody has changed since. Only collections whose products are chosen by hand can be chosen.
• Edit in a table opens the table below with only the chosen products, and Export as CSV downloads them in the columns the CSV import reads.

Clear selection unticks every product.

Edit in a table in the More menu on Products lists every variant with its price, compare-at price, cost, SKU and stock. Change any cells, then click Save changes. Only the cells you changed are saved, and stock changes are recorded as counts in each item's stock history. Search to narrow the list, and save before moving to another page of variants.

If someone else changed a variant after you opened the page, that variant is not saved and the page says so; reload to see the new values. Stock can be changed only by people who can manage stock, and only for variants that track stock.

Duplicate a product

Duplicate product in the More menu beside the product's name copies the product as a new draft named "Copy of" its name: its details, options, variants with their prices, cost and settings, images, tags, specifications and personalisation fields. Each SKU gets -COPY added so SKUs stay unique, barcodes are left empty, and stock starts at 0.

Goes with

Goes with on a product's page lists other products to show with it. Choose Add products, search, and add up to 8; put them in order with the arrows or by dragging, and Remove takes one off the list without changing the product. Shoppers see up to 4 of them that are live, under the product on its page, and the Cart shows those chosen for the products in it, leaving out what is already in the Cart.

Images and files

Add and order product images, choose useful alternative text, and associate an image with a variant where helpful. Digital files are private and delivered only through a paid order link; the website accepts several files per product, up to 500 MB each (see Sell digital products, files and licence keys). The Magpie app can browse the account file library, upload a PDF or ZIP up to 25 MB, and set or remove a digital product's first file.

In the Magpie app, team admins and members with the Manage products permission choose Add on Products, enter the product's name, choose under What are you selling? whether it is a physical item or a file people download, and choose Add. The product is created as a draft and opens. Its name, description, shipping and featured state change where they are shown; Price and inventory changes each variant's price, SKU, stock, whether its stock is tracked and whether it is for sale. Changing the stock there needs the Manage stock permission; when the Store keeps stock in more than one location, it shows the total, and a Stock count changes the stock at a location. Images, the digital file and options have their own screens, and images can be uploaded from the device or chosen from the image library. Make live applies the same publishing checks as the website. Remove from store and Archive product are in the product's menu and ask you to confirm.

On the website, Make live, beside a product's name, puts it in your Store. Publishing requires an image and at least one active purchasable variant. On a live product, Remove from store in the More menu takes it out of the Store and makes it a draft again; Archive product in the same menu archives it. A published product address remains stable. Archive products needed by old orders rather than deleting their history. For a valid variant that remains unavailable, Contact support.