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Creating products
There are three ways to get products into Boxture:
- By hand, one at a time, on the product screen.
- By import, from a CSV or Excel file. This is the fastest way to create or update many products at once.
- Through an integration: a connected shop (such as Shopify) or your own system through the API creates and updates products automatically.
Whichever way you use, a new product starts in the concept state. It has to be published before it can be used on orders and in inventory transactions. See Product lifecycle.
Creating a product by hand
You need to be a Boxture admin, a warehouse associate or an account owner of the account to create products.
- Go to Products.
- Open the menu of the Products card and click Create.
- On the Attributes tab, fill in at least the Number. Usually you also fill in the Name, the EAN/UPC and the tracking flags (lot tracked, expirable, serialized).
- If the account has child accounts, the product is created for the account you are currently working in.
- Fill in the other tabs as needed: aliases, kit components, packaging, warehousing, pricing, dimensions and weight, customs and media. Product details explains every field.
- Click Create and continue editing to save and stay on the product, or Create Product to save and go back.
- Open the product menu and click Publish to make the product active.
Decide on tracking before you receive stock
Number, Serialized, Serialization mode, Expirable, Inventoriable and Lot tracked can't be changed once the product has inventory. Set them right before you receive the first items. See Product lifecycle.
Rules Boxture checks when you save
| Rule | Message if broken |
|---|---|
| Number is filled in and unique within the account, ignoring upper/lower case. | Number needs to be unique per account |
| Number isn't already used as an alias number of another product in the account. | Number has already been taken |
| EAN/UPC is 8, 12 or 13 digits, and no other product or alias in the account uses it. | EAN/UPC is invalid / has already been taken |
| If you enter a weight, you also choose a weight unit, and the other way around. Weight must be greater than 0. | |
| If you enter any of length, width, height or dimensions unit, you have to fill in all four. Each dimension must be greater than 0. | |
| Quantity inner pack, quantity case and quantity pallet are greater than 0. | |
| Lot pattern and serial number pattern are valid regular expressions. | |
| Origin country is a valid country. | |
| The product category is active. | |
| Kit rules: see Kits. |
Importing products
An import lets you create and update many products in one go from a CSV or Excel file. Boxture admins and account owners can import products.
Steps
- Go to Products, open the card menu and click Import. Boxture admins can also go to Admin › Imports and choose the product import. See Imports.
- Click sample template to download an Excel file with all supported columns. The sample explains each column and shows an example value.
- To change existing products, click current data instead. This downloads all products of your current account in the import format, with the product ID in the Product column, so you can edit and re-upload them.
- Fill in or edit the rows. Delete the columns you don't need; missing columns leave those fields unchanged.
- Choose the file, then click Preview to check the result first, or Upload to run the import.
- The import results list below the form shows, per import, how many rows succeeded and which rows failed and why.
Creating versus updating
A row updates an existing product when the Product column contains the product ID or the product number. When Product is empty, the row creates a new product. If a product with the same number already exists, that row fails with "Number needs to be unique per account". So to update products, always fill in the Product column.
Import columns
The column names below are the headers in the sample template. Yes/no columns accept TRUE or FALSE.
General
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Product | Only for updates: the product ID (36 characters) or the product number of the product to update. |
| Product Account | The account the product belongs to, by ID or name. Leave empty to use your current account. If several accounts have the same name, use the ID. |
| Product category | The category, by ID or name. A category that doesn't exist yet is created, and an inactive category is made active. |
| Number | Required for new products. Unique per account. |
| EAN or UPC | 8, 12 or 13 digits. |
| Name | The product name. |
| Description | The description. HTML is kept. |
| UN Number | The UN number for dangerous goods. |
| Scannable | TRUE/FALSE. New products are scannable unless you set FALSE. |
| Setup Complete | TRUE/FALSE, default FALSE. |
| Lot Tracked | TRUE/FALSE, default FALSE. |
| Lot Pattern | A regular expression lot numbers must match, e.g. ^[0-9]{4}[A-Z]{2}$. |
| Expirable | TRUE/FALSE, default FALSE. |
| Insert | TRUE/FALSE, default FALSE. |
| Serialized | TRUE/FALSE, default FALSE. |
| Serialization Mode | outbound or full. Only used when Serialized is TRUE; defaults to outbound. |
| Serial Number Pattern | A regular expression serial numbers must match. |
| Inventoriable | TRUE/FALSE, default TRUE. |
| Images | One or more image URLs separated by commas. Boxture downloads the images and adds them to the product. |
| Vendor | The vendor, by name or ID. Only active vendors of the product's account are matched; if none is found the vendor is left empty. |
| Metadata | Extra data as JSON, e.g. {"product_color": "blue"}. |
| Event | publish, expire or republish to change the product state. Leave empty to keep the product in its current state (new products stay in concept). |
Price, dimensions and customs
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Price | The selling price, e.g. 9,99. |
| Price Currency | ISO currency code, e.g. EUR. Defaults to the account's default currency. |
| Price Country | The country this price applies to. Leave empty for the default price that applies to all countries. |
| Weight | Weight of one unit. |
| Weight Unit | g, kg, lbs or oz. Required when Weight is filled in. |
| Width, Height, Length | Dimensions of one unit. |
| Dimensions Unit | mm, cm, ft, in or m. Required when a dimension is filled in. |
| HS Code | The Harmonized System code. |
| ECCN | The Export Control Classification Number. |
| Origin Country | The country of origin, as a country code or name. |
| Customs value | The value for customs paperwork. Defaults to 0. |
| Customs value Currency | ISO currency code. Defaults to USD. |
| Customs Description | Description for customs clearance. |
Warehousing
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| UOM | Unit of measure; only each is supported. |
| Quantity Inner Pack | Number of units in an inner pack. Default 1. |
| Inner Pack Type | Packing material of the inner pack, by ID or name. |
| Quantity Inner Packs Per Case | Number of inner packs in a case. |
| Quantity Case | Number of units in a case. Default 1. |
| Case Type | Packing material of the case, by ID or name. |
| Quantity Cases Per Layer | Number of cases in one pallet layer. |
| Quantity Pallet | Number of units on a pallet. Default 1. |
| Pallet Type | Packing material of the pallet, by ID or name. |
| Quantity Layers Per Pallet | Number of layers on a pallet. |
Aliases, kit components and packaging
Each row can add one alias, one kit component and one product packaging. To add more, repeat the product on several rows.
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Alias Channel | Name of the channel the alias applies to, e.g. Shopify. Leave empty for an alias that applies to all channels. |
| Alias Number | The alias number. An existing alias with this number is updated, otherwise one is added. |
| Alias EAN or UPC | The alias barcode. |
| Alias Metadata | Extra alias data as JSON. |
| Kitting Component Product | Number or ID of a component product. Makes the product a kit. |
| Kitting Component Quantity | How many of that component go into one kit. |
| Product Packaging Location | ID of the location where the packing material is used. Leave empty for all locations. |
| Product Packaging Packing Material | ID of the packing material to add to the product's packaging. |
Importing kits
To import a kit with two components, use one row per component:
| Number | Kitting Component Product | Kitting Component Quantity | Event |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPNT-A | publish | ||
| CPNT-B | publish | ||
| KIT-1 | CPNT-A | 1 | |
| KIT-1 | CPNT-B | 2 | publish |
When a row has a kitting component, Boxture looks up the kit by Number as well, so the second row for KIT-1 adds a component to the kit created by the first row. The rows don't have to be in this order: if a component product doesn't exist yet when its kit row is processed, that row waits and is retried after the other rows, so components created further down in the same file are found.
The rules for kits still apply: if a component is serialized, lot tracked or expirable, the kit must be set up the same way. See Kits.
Tips
- When you update a product, only the columns in the file change. An empty cell leaves the value unchanged, except in columns that have a default: an empty Lot Tracked, Expirable, Serialized, Inventoriable, Customs value, Customs value Currency, Quantity Inner Pack, Quantity Case or Quantity Pallet cell resets that field to its default. Leave those columns out of the file if you don't want to touch them.
- Columns that can't be changed while there's inventory (such as Number, Serialized or Lot Tracked) fail for products that have inventory.
- Use Preview first on large files to catch errors before anything is saved.
Products from integrations
Shopify
When a shop is connected, Boxture creates and updates a product for every variant that has a SKU. The SKU becomes the product number. Products are published automatically when the Shopify product is active, and expired when the variant is removed in Shopify. If a SKU matches an alias instead of a product, only the alias barcode is updated.
A SKU that contains [+] creates an impromptu kit: a kit product whose components are taken from the SKU. See Kits.
More in Shopify.
API and other integrations
Your own systems can create, update, publish, expire and republish products through the API. See API and Other integrations.
After creating a product
- Publish it: Product lifecycle.
- Set a standard bin location for each warehouse on the Warehousing tab, so picking knows where to look first.
- Set a reorder level on the product's settings to get low-stock notifications. See Product details.
- If your account requires it, switch on Setup complete once the product is fully set up. See Product details.