From In-Portal User Manual

Current revision

General

This tab contains the main attributes of a tangible product. A tangible product is usually a physical item, that you have to keep in stock and ship to your customers when purchased.

• Product ID – this read-only field displays the unique internal system ID of the product.
• Product Type – this read-only field displays the product’s type, in our case ‘tangible’.
• Title* - this required field contains the product name, and it is translatable.
• SKU * - this required field contains the product ID that you, as a store administrator, assign to your products. It can be in any format, or you can also use the manufacturer’s product code. The SKU is used in several places where a unique product number has to be used with some external sources – for example, in communication with users, or in a Froogle export. The SKU is supposed to be more descriptive and user-friendly than the internal In-portal product ID.
• Description – this field contains the full product description, displayed on the front-end and used in the simple search.
• Excerpt – this field contains a short version of the description, and it’s used wherever a full description would not fit.
• Automatic Filename – specifies whether the Filename used for mod_rewrite should be generated automatically from the link name, or entered manually. If checked, the Filename will be generated from the link name, replacing all special characters ( !@#$%^&*()+|\=-~`{}][:”’;,./?>< ) by the underscore character (“_”), and all multiple underscores with a single underscore. If the resulting name ends with an underscore followed by number, an additional letter will be appended, since the names ending with a number are reserved for system use. The resulting name will also be checked for uniqueness, and if it’s not unique, additional letters will be appended to the end of the name
• Custom Filename – the filename used for the URL generation when using mod_rewrite. The field is disabled if Automatic Filename is On. If Automatic Filename is Off, the administrator may enter the filename manually, however it will still be checked for uniqueness, special characters and whether it ends with a number. In such cases the Filename will be automatically corrected before saving.
• Manage Shipping Types – a link to a pop-up window for managing Shipping Type limitations for the current product. The administrator can limit the shipping types that can be chosen during checkout, or select additional shipping types not available in general, but only for this product.
• Manufacturer – this dropdown allows you to choose from a pre-defined list of manufactures (see manual). This field is optional, but if utilized, it will allow your visitors to quickly reference the manufacturer of this product, and also easily find other products by the same manufacturer.
• Weight – this field contains the product weight, and is used primarily in shipping cost calculations. Generally, you do not need to fill out this field if your shipping charges are not based on weight.
• MSRP – this is a default field for the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. The default In-commerce theme is equipped to show a price comparison between your actual price and MSRP (it is presumed that your price is lower than MSRP).
• New – this flag specifies how the system calculates the state of this product’s New attribute. ‘Auto’ means the product will be displayed as ‘new’ for a certain period of time, determined by the configuration settings. ‘Always’ means that the product is always displayed as ‘new’, and ‘Never’, respectively, never becomes ‘new’.
• Top Seller – this flag specifies how the system calculates the state of this product’s Top Seller attribute. ‘Auto’ means the value is based on the number of items purchased in all of the processed orders (this number is recoded in the Qty Sold field). In the output configuration section (see manual) you can define the maximum number of Top Seller products in your entire store. ‘Always’ means that the product is always displayed as ‘Top Seller’, and ‘Never’, respectively, never becomes ‘Top Seller’.
• Pop - this field controls how the product’s ‘pop’ status is calculated by In-commerce. In automatic mode, In-commerce will consider those products as “popular”, which have at least X number of votes and have a rating above the predefined threshold. The number of votes and rating threshold are defined in the Output options section (see manual).
• Editors Pick - this flags sets the Editor’s Pick attribute of the product. Editor’s pick products are displayed in a separate template (different look from the rest of the products) and at the top of any listing which they are a part of (category, search results, Manufacturer’s products, etc.)
• Featured - this flags sets the Featured attribute of the product. Featured products are prominently displayed on the home page of the store.
• Priority – this field determines the sort order of the product in any listing. If left blank, the default sorting is used.
  
• Created on - this field contains the creation date/time stamp of the product. It is automatically set by the system when the product is added, however it can be changed by the administrator. The date can be entered directly into the field, or by using the visual calendar tool.
• Expire - this field contains the product expiration date and time, entered by the administrator. Expired products are not displayed on the front end of the online store. The date can be entered directly into the field, or by using the visual calendar tool.
• Enable Backordering – this is the backorder control status of the product, it works together with the system-wide backorder setting found in the general settings section. If the system-wide option for backordering is turned on, the ‘Auto’ setting will switch between instant ordering (regular) and backordering, depending on the threshold setting below. The ‘Always’ setting will force the backordering, even when there is enough product in stock, and ‘Never’ will disable backordering for this product (as if the system-wide setting was off). If the system-wide setting is off, the “enable backordering” will not have any influence on the order process. For more information about backorders, please see manual section.
• Backorder availability date – this date and time specifies when a product will become available for preordering, if it is not in stock. Essentially, this is a “preorder availability date”. In the current version, In-commerce does not distinguish between preorders and backorders, so the preorders are processed under the ‘Backorder’ tab. This date does not affect the ordering process, it is only used to show the customer, when a product will become available.
• Minimum quantity in stock threshold – when the quantity in stock falls below this amount, the product will be switched to backordered status, if the backorder capability is enabled for this product (see general settings and ‘Enable Backordering’ above). If backordering is disabled and the quantity falls below the threshold amount, the product will not be available for purchase, and your customers will not be able to place it in the shopping cart. By default, the threshold is zero (blank counts as zero), but it may be useful to set this amount higher, if you want to keep some quantity of the product in stock, as a reserve.
• Rating – this field contains the numeric rating of the product. The rating is calculated as the average value of all ratings selected by users for this product. The range of the value is predefined, and displayed to the right as a hint. The administrator can manually change the rating if necessary.
• Votes – this field contains the number of votes for the product. Each time a user votes (selects rating) for the product on the front-end, this value is incremented by one. This value is important for the rating calculating, it is used in the formula to calculate the average. The administrator can manually change the number of votes if necessary.
• Qty Sold – this field contains the number of times someone has purchased this product. It is incremented every time an order containing this product is approved. The administrator can manually change this quantity if necessary. It is used for the calculation of Top Sellers flag (see above).

Service, subscription, downloadable

All of the fields have the same meaning as for the tangible products. The only distinction is that Service, Subscription and Downloadable products do not have the fields that are related to physical items (backorder controls and weight, for example).
A subscription product is designed to sell subscriptions (or memberships) to other In-portal sections or modules. For example, if you want to have separate News sections, a free one, and one for paying members, you can use the subscription product to sell the membership to the paid news section.
A downloadable product is designed to sell any electronic products such as software, e-books, mp3 files, pdf files, images and any other type of files. Each downloadable product may have an unlimited number of files associated with it.
A service product is designed to sell any other, non - In-portal product or service that is not physically kept in stock and does not have to be shipped. An example would be an online babysitting business – when the customers pay for babysitting services online, yet there is nothing to be shipped.