Products

The Product Catalogue is the list of everything you buy for your restaurant. Every item from every supplier lives here, with its packaging, its category, and its full price history. You rarely have to build this list by hand. Spensa fills it as you approve invoices, and it keeps every price you ever paid so you can see how costs change over time.

What this is for

• See every product you buy, with its latest price per unit.
• Search, filter, and sort your products.
• Create products by hand, or let Spensa create them from your invoices.
• Describe how a product is packaged, for example a crate of 20 bottles of 0.5 l.
• Follow a product's price history and how much of it you buy.
• Add prices by hand for products you do not buy through invoices.
• Fix invoice lines that were matched to the wrong product.
• Merge duplicate products and delete products you no longer need.
• Hide product categories you do not use.
• Browse product groups, where Spensa collects similar products from different suppliers.

Where to open it

On the web, open the left sidebar and click Product Catalogue in the Workspace group. At the top of the page you can switch between two tabs: Products and Product Groups.

You can also find any product or product group through the search that opens from the top of the app.

The phone app has no product catalogue. Products show up inside other flows there: when you place orders, count inventory, or record stock outflows. While recording a stock outflow on the phone, you can also create a new product on the spot.

Access and permissions

Admins and managers can do everything described here. Other team members do not see the Product Catalogue unless you give them a custom role with permission to manage products. Hiding or unhiding product categories needs permission to manage product categories. Read more in Team and permissions.

What a product is

A product is something you buy, not something you sell. Your menu lives elsewhere; the catalogue is your purchasing side.

A few things are good to know from the start:

• Every product belongs to exactly one supplier. This cannot change later. If you start buying the same item from a different supplier, that is a second product.
• Products are shared across all your locations (the app sometimes calls a location an "establishment").
• A product can have one category, which helps with filtering and sorting.
• You do not type a price on the product itself. Prices come from your approved invoices, plus any prices you add by hand. Spensa collects them into the product's price history.

Where products come from

Products get into your catalogue in four ways:

1. From invoices. This is the main way. When you approve an invoice, Spensa first tries to match each line to a product you already have, using the supplier item code, the exact name, or smart matching. Lines that match nothing become new products. Spensa fills in the name, supplier, item code, packaging, and a suggested category, and adds allergens automatically when it can. See Invoices.
2. By hand. Click New Product in the catalogue. On the phone, you can create a product while recording a stock outflow.
3. From order templates. Creating a new item inside a template adds it to your catalogue immediately, and confirming an imported template turns rows that match no existing product into new products. See Order templates.
4. Through the assistant. Ask the assistant to add products for you, one or many at once. See The assistant.

If your catalogue is still empty, the page explains this flow and offers two buttons: Upload invoice and Add manually, plus a "See how it works" link.

Creating a product by hand

Use this when you want a product in the catalogue before its first invoice arrives, for example to put it on an order template.

1. Open the Product Catalogue and click New Product.
2. Enter the product name.
3. Optionally enter the Supplier Product ID. This is the number or code the supplier uses for the item. It helps Spensa match invoice lines to this product later.
4. Choose the supplier. This is required and cannot be changed afterwards. If the supplier does not exist yet and you have permission to manage suppliers, typing its name offers a shortcut to create it, with the name already filled in.
5. Optionally choose a category. As you type the product name, Spensa suggests the best-matching category. You can only pick from the existing list; you cannot create new categories.
6. Describe the packaging. See the next section.
7. Optionally set the ordering defaults: Order quantity and Order unit. This is the amount Spensa pre-fills when you add the product to an order or template. Choose No default order unit to clear both. If you set one, you must set the other.
8. Optionally enter a Unit price. Spensa saves it as a manual price dated today, so the product starts with a price instead of "No price data". This field only exists when creating; later prices come from invoices or from the Add Price button on the product page.
9. Optionally mark allergens. You can toggle each of the 14 EU allergens: gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphites, lupin, and molluscs.
10. Save the product.

One rule about duplicates: if you set a supplier item code, you cannot create a second product with the same supplier, the same code, and the same name. Products without a code may share names freely.

Product units and unit structure

The product unit structure, shown as Unit structure on the product page, tells Spensa how one purchased unit breaks down. It is worth getting right, because invoices, orders, manual prices, recipes, and inventory counts all use these units, and Spensa converts between them for you.

Think of it in two parts:

• Packaging layers are the countable units you buy or count, like crate, bottle, case, box, bag, tray, or piece.
• Measures are the weight or volume inside the smallest layer, like 500 ml per bottle or 2 kg per bag.

An example: you buy mineral water as a crate of 20 bottles, and each bottle holds 0.5 l. You would set up:

1. Click Add packaging and choose Crate as the Packaging unit.
2. Click Add packaging again for the inner layer: choose Bottle and enter 20 as the quantity. This means one crate contains 20 bottles.
3. Click Add volume and enter 0.5 l. A weight or volume always describes the smallest packaging layer, so this says one bottle holds 0.5 l.

Now Spensa can show and compare this product's price per crate, per bottle, or per litre. This setup is also what menu costs, inventory counts, order templates, and invoice price history use when they convert between units.

That means one product setup can answer several everyday questions:

• Invoices can compare supplier prices even when one invoice says crate and another says bottle.
• Orders can show the default order unit your team uses.
• Inventory can count in the units people see on the shelf.
• Menu Costs can cost a recipe in grams, milliliters, pieces, bottles, or packs when those units exist on the product.

The details:

• You can stack up to 6 packaging layers. Available packaging units are Piece, Pack, Case, Crate, Bag, Box, Bottle, Can, Jar, Tray, Bunch, Barrel, and Bucket.
• Quantities count across the whole chain. "2 boxes, 8 trays, 64 pieces" means one purchased unit contains 2 boxes, 8 trays in total, and 64 pieces in total.
• You can add up to 2 measures: one weight and one volume, with Add weight and Add volume. Weight units are kg, g, lb, and oz. Volume units are l, ml, cl, gal, qt, pt, and fl oz.
• Each layer can have an optional Packaging name. If two layers use the same unit, for example a box inside a box, names become required so they can be told apart. Spensa reminds you: "Repeated packaging units need a name so they can be told apart."
• Use Edit packaging, Remove packaging, Edit measure, and Remove measure to adjust the setup.

The price unit

Each product has a preferred unit for showing prices. It is used for the price on the list page, the charts, and the tables. You choose it as Price unit when creating the product, and you can change it any time with the Unit selector on the product page's Price History card.

Changing the packaging later

If a product already has history, such as invoice lines or counts, and you change its packaging, Spensa may need your help to carry the history over. A dialog called Update packaging conversions appears and asks you to fill in rows like "1 old unit equals ... new unit". You can enter up to 16 such conversions. Spensa then rewrites the history so old invoice lines and order lines stay correct in the new packaging. You cannot save the change without answering.

Finding products in the list

The list shows one card per product: the name, the supplier item code, the supplier, the default order amount, the category badge, and the latest price per unit on the right, for example €1.2345/kg. Hover over the price to see it converted into every unit of the product's packaging, with your preferred unit highlighted. Products that have no approved invoice line and no manual price show No price data instead.

• Search. Type in the Search products box. Spensa searches product names, and small typos are fine. It also matches supplier item codes.
• Filter. Open the filter menu to filter by Supplier or Category (you can pick several of each), or tick No price data to see only products without any price yet. Active filters appear as small chips you can remove one by one, or clear all at once with Clear all filters.
• Sort. Open the display menu to sort by Name, Supplier, Supplier Product ID, Category, or Created At, each ascending (A-Z) or descending (Z-A). The default is Created At with the newest products first. Category sorting follows your language: in German, for example, "Bakery" sorts under its German name "Backwaren".

The list loads more products as you scroll. When you open a product and step to the previous or next one from its page, Spensa keeps your filters and sorting, so you can walk through a filtered list product by product.

The product page

Click any product to open its page. It has several cards.

Product Details

The summary at the top: Name, Category (or "Uncategorized"), Supplier, Supplier Product ID, Unit structure, Order amount, and Allergens. Click the pencil to edit.

Price History

This card shows how the product's price develops. Two controls apply to the whole card:

• Unit - choose which unit prices are shown in. The choices come from the product's own packaging and measures, grouped into Count units, Weight units, and Volume units. Your choice is saved on the product and used everywhere prices are displayed.
• Period - 3 months, 1 year, or All.

Two chart tabs:

• Cost Trend - a line chart of the price per unit over time. It combines prices from approved invoices (with line discounts already applied) and manual prices. If both exist on the same day, the manual price wins. Between purchases the line continues at the last known price, so you always see what the product cost at any point in time.
• Purchase Quantity - a chart of how much you bought, based on approved invoices. Choose the Interval (Daily, Weekly, or Monthly) and use the Establishments filter to split the bars by location.

Latest Invoices

A table of the entries feeding the price history, newest first, with columns Establishment, Date, Quantity, Total price, Unit price, and Change (the price change compared to the previous entry). Prices you entered by hand appear in the same table with a Manual tag. Click Load more to see older entries.

Fixing wrongly assigned invoice lines

Sometimes an invoice line lands on the wrong product, or its quantity or packaging was read wrong. You can fix all of that here, from the row's menu:

• Edit item - correct the quantity, unit price, or packaging of an approved invoice line. You can also apply the corrected reading to all matching lines of this product in one go, which is handy when the same mistake repeated across invoices.
• Change product - move the line to a different product. If the two products use units that do not fit together, a Set conversion rate dialog asks how many units of the new product equal one unit of the old, so the price stays correct.
• Remove link - detach the line from this product. The invoice itself is untouched; the line just no longer counts towards this product's history.
• View Invoice - jump to the invoice the line came from. This needs permission to view invoices.

Adding a price by hand

Manual prices are useful for products you do not buy through invoices, or to record a quoted price.

1. Click Add Price on the Latest Invoices table.
2. Enter the unit price. You can enter it against any of the product's units.
3. Pick the date. It cannot be in the future.
4. Save. The price appears in the table with a Manual tag.

There can only be one manual price per product per day. Adding another price for the same day replaces the first. Use Edit price and Delete price on a manual row to change or remove it.

Inventory History

If your organization uses inventory and this product has been counted, the page also shows the counted quantities from finished counts over time, one line per location, for ranges of 30 days, 90 days, 1 year, or all time, plus the 20 most recent entries. Seeing this card needs permission to view inventory. See Inventory.

Order Templates

A list of all order templates that contain this product, with their name, Published or Draft status, location, and supplier. You can search the list, filter by location, and sort it. If the product is not on any template, the card says so.

Editing a product

1. Open the product and click the pencil on the Product Details card.
2. Change what you need. The fields are the same as when creating, with two differences: the supplier is shown but cannot be changed, and there is no price field.
3. Changes save automatically when you leave a field. A saving indicator in the header shows the status. While you have unsaved changes, a Cancel button lets you revert them, and leaving the page asks you whether to discard them.

Adding an allergen to a product automatically carries it into every recipe and menu item that uses the product. See Recipes.

Merging two products

Use merging when the same item ended up in your catalogue twice, for example under slightly different names from different invoices.

1. Open the product you want to get rid of and go to its edit page.
2. Open the three-dot menu and choose Merge.
3. Pick the Recipient product. The current product is dissolved into it.
4. Confirm.

Everything moves to the recipient: invoice lines, order lines, recipe ingredients, manual prices, inventory entries, stock outflows, and order template items. Allergens from both products are combined. The merged-away product is deleted. If both products have a manual price on the same date, the recipient's price is kept.

Merging has requirements: both products must belong to the same supplier, they must be measured in the same kind of base unit, and their packaging must line up. If not, Spensa tells you, for example "Products must use the same unit category before they can be merged." or "Match the product packaging before merging these products." Adjust the packaging first, then merge.

Deleting products

To delete one product, open its edit page, open the three-dot menu, and choose Delete Product. Spensa asks you to confirm: "This action cannot be undone."

To delete several at once, open the three-dot menu on the list page and choose Edit. Checkboxes appear on the cards. Select the products and delete them; a confirmation dialog appears here too.

Deleting a product does not delete any invoices. Invoice lines simply lose their link to the product. Recipes that used the product lose that ingredient link, the product disappears from every order template that used it, and price increase notifications for the product are cleared.

Product categories

Categories organize your catalogue. Spensa comes with a ready-made list of 23: Bakery, Beer, Cleaning Supplies, Coffee, Condiments & Sauces, Cutlery, Dairy & Eggs, Dinnerware, Dry Goods & Pantry, Equipment, Frozen Foods, Glassware, Herbs & Spices, Meat & Poultry, Non-alcoholic Beverages, Paper & Disposables, Produce, Red Wine, Seafood, Sparkling Wine, Spirits & Liquors, Tea, and White Wine. Each has a fixed color, and all names are shown in your language.

You cannot add your own categories, but you can hide the ones you do not use:

1. Open your organization settings and go to the Product Categories page.
2. Each category shows its color, its name, and how many products use it.
3. Click Hide on a category to remove it from category pickers and suggestions. Products that already have the category keep it. Click Unhide to bring it back.

Hiding and unhiding needs permission to manage product categories.

When you type a product name, in the product form or while reviewing an invoice, Spensa suggests the best-matching visible category automatically.

Product Groups

Open the Product Groups tab at the top of the Product Catalogue. A product group collects interchangeable products: the same ingredient from different suppliers, brands, or pack sizes. For example, apricot jam from two suppliers ends up in one group with a plain kitchen name like "Apricot jam", so you can see your alternatives across suppliers side by side.

Spensa builds and maintains these groups fully automatically. Whenever a product is added to your catalogue, Spensa sorts it into a fitting group or starts a new one. You cannot create, rename, or rearrange groups yourself; for now, this tab is for browsing and comparing.

• The tab lists your groups with the group name, the number of products, and a preview of up to 3 products with their suppliers. Use Search product groups to find one. Before any groups exist, the tab says "No product groups yet".
• Click a group to see its detail page: the name, the product count, when the group was created and last updated, and the full list of its products with category, supplier, supplier code, and the date each product was grouped. Each product links to its own page.

How this connects to other parts of Spensa

• Invoices - approving invoices creates products and feeds their price history; you can fix line assignments from the product page.
• Suppliers - every product belongs to exactly one supplier; deleting a supplier also deletes its products.
• Orders - the default order amount and the packaging units are used when you order the product.
• Order templates - templates are built from products, and importing a template can create products.
• Menu costs - dish costs are calculated from product prices and packaging.
• Recipes - recipe ingredients link to products, and product allergens carry into recipes and menu items.
• Inventory - counts use the product's packaging units, and counted history shows on the product page. On the phone, the "how to count" setup can adjust a product's packaging.
• The assistant - ask the assistant to create or edit products, or to answer questions about your catalogue.
• Notifications - price increase notifications point at products.

Good to know

• You can have up to 5,000 products in your organization.
• A product's packaging can have up to 6 layers plus one weight and one volume measure.
• When changing packaging on a product with history, you can enter up to 16 conversion rows.
• There is one manual price per product per day; adding another replaces it.
• There is no archive for products. A product is either in your catalogue or deleted.
• Duplicate protection only applies when a supplier item code is set. Two products without codes may share the same name.
• Unit prices below one euro are shown with four decimals, so small differences stay visible.
• Team members who manage menu costs can add a missing weight or volume to a product from the recipe side, even without access to the Product Catalogue. This makes an ingredient costable without switching roles.
• The app-wide search also finds products and product groups, so you can jump to them from anywhere.