Every item you stock, sell, or lend starts as a product record. Add it to the catalog first, then inventory and orders have something to point at.

Add the product

1. Go to Products & Inventory > Products and click Add New. Argenta creates the record and opens the Product Workspace on Product Details.
2. Fill in the required fields, marked with an orange asterisk: Product Name, Vendor Cost (what you pay for it), and Unit of Measure.
3. Pick the Vendor you buy it from. Profit Margin works itself out from your cost and price.
4. Write a Product Description.
5. Set Your Retail Price, which is what you charge. This field only becomes editable once you turn on the Product Is for Resale switch.
6. Click Save All Changes & Continue to stay on the record, or Save All Changes & Exit to go back to the list.

The four switches

These decide how the product behaves everywhere else, so they are worth a moment:

• Active Product keeps it in circulation.
• Product Is for Resale unlocks the retail price. Leave it off for something you buy purely for internal use.
• Product Can Be Lent Out makes it available to the Lend Out Inventory pages.
• Track In Inventory brings it into the inventory count. Without this you have a catalog entry and no stock tracking.

Classifying and identifying it

• Product Type, Product Category, and Product Group are how you organize the catalog for filtering and reporting.
• Vendor's Product Number and Serial Number tie your record back to the supplier's.
• Par Level is the stock level you want to keep on hand, which is your cue to reorder.
• Unit of Measure is required, and it is how the product gets counted everywhere else in the system.

Worth knowing

• There is no image upload on a product record. Describe the item in the description instead.
• Quantity on hand is not set here. Stock lives in Product Inventory and is added or removed there.
• Copy This Product and the orange Copy & Add New action on the list save a lot of typing when you are adding variations of the same item.
• The workspace also holds Product Files, Product Notes, and Record Permissions, where you can set the record view only or lock it.

Next: How to Track Inventory Changes.