Your Catalog Is the Foundation
Every sale, purchase order, and inventory count references your product catalog. Getting it right before you go live saves hours of corrections later. FlexotiumPOS gives you three ways to add products: manual entry, bulk CSV import, and AI-assisted setup.
Adding Products Manually
Go to Inventory → Products → Add Product. Fill in:
- Product name — used in search and on receipts
- SKU — your internal stock-keeping unit; must be unique
- Category — group products for reporting and filtering
- Unit of Measure (UOM) — e.g. each, kg, litre, box
- Selling price — the customer-facing price including tax if applicable
- Cost price — used for margin calculations and reporting
- Reorder point — the quantity at which a low-stock alert fires
- Reorder quantity — how much to order when stock hits the reorder point
- Supplier — link to a supplier for automatic purchase order generation
Click Save to add the product. It becomes immediately available on the POS terminal.
Bulk CSV Import
If you have an existing catalog in a spreadsheet, use the bulk import feature.
- Go to Inventory → Products → Import
- Download the CSV template — it shows all required and optional columns
- Fill in your products (one per row)
- Upload the completed file and click Preview Import
- Review the validation summary — errors are highlighted with the row number and issue
- Fix any errors and re-upload, or click Import Valid Rows to skip errors and continue
- Confirm the final count and click Complete Import
The maximum import batch size is 5,000 products. For larger catalogs, split into multiple files and import sequentially. Duplicate SKUs are rejected automatically.
AI-Assisted Product Setup
For new products where you don't yet have full details, use the AI Copilot to help. Click Add Product → Use AI Assistant, then describe the product in plain English:
"A 500ml glass bottle of cold-pressed orange juice, sold individually, typically costs us £1.20 and retails at £2.50."
The AI will pre-fill the form fields it can infer — name, UOM, price suggestions, and a suggested category. Review and correct anything it gets wrong, then save.
The AI is particularly good at suggesting reorder points based on product descriptions. For perishables it defaults to a shorter reorder cycle; for seasonal items it flags you to review manually.
Categories and Organisation
Create categories at Inventory → Categories. Categories are hierarchical — you can have a parent category "Beverages" with sub-categories "Hot Drinks" and "Cold Drinks". Products inherit the parent's tax class unless overridden.
Good categories make your sales reports far more useful. Avoid catch-all categories like "Miscellaneous" — the more specific your taxonomy, the better your analytics.
Setting Reorder Points Before Going Live
Set reorder points before your first sale. If reorder points are missing, the low-stock alert system won't fire, and you risk selling out without an automatic purchase order being triggered. Use the Bulk Edit view (Inventory → Products → Bulk Edit) to set reorder points across multiple products at once.
A good starting reorder point is 2× your average daily sales quantity × your supplier lead time in days. For example: if you sell 10 units per day and your supplier takes 3 days to deliver, set your reorder point to 60 units.
Next Steps
With your catalog built, you're ready to explore the AI Copilot — which can answer operational questions, flag anomalies, and help you make faster decisions.