This guide introduces the different types of products you might encounter in your Evolution systems, LightSpeed and Vital. Understanding these product types is crucial for maintaining accurate inventory, streamlining your sales and service operations, and ensuring consistent data across your platforms. Think of it like a cheat sheet to help you know what's what when dealing with your inventory, ensuring you pick the right "apple" or "orange" for your business needs.
Overview
Knowing the different product types helps you keep your inventory organised and ensures smooth operation between your systems. Mastering this information ensures accurate inventory management, prevents discrepancies between LightSpeed and Vital, and supports efficient sales and service workflows. Inaccurate product setup can lead to incorrect invoicing, stock imbalances, and reconciliation issues.
While this guide focuses on understanding product types rather than a specific step-by-step process for creation, here's how you'll generally interact with products in each system.
Your Product & Inventory Hub - LightSpeed
LightSpeed is the main system where you'll manage all your products. It's like the central warehouse where you keep track of everything you have in stock. Here are the types of products you'll find in LightSpeed:
Example: A filter cartridge available in 25 sq ft, 50 sq ft, and 75 sq ft. Each size is a variant with its own SKU and stock level.
Example: A pool cleaning kit that includes a brush, a net, and some chlorine.
You can also use composite products for fractional stock, which can be useful to sell products in different quantities such as bulk products you sell (or dose) in lesser quantities.
Example: A 20L drum of liquid chlorine sold in 1L increments. The 20L drum is the parent product, and each 1L composite product invoiced (dispensed) reduces the inventory of the main drum.
Example: Think of a bottle of liquid chlorine, it has its own unique identifier (SKU) and inventory.
Your Field Assistant - Vital
Vital is where you'll use product data from LightSpeed to track what you need for jobs and create invoices. Here's how Vital uses products:
- Recommendations- These are the chemicals your technicians use for services to dose the body of water, like chlorine or algaecide. You can link products to each recommendation so that the Technicians can easily add dosages to service invoices directly from the water test results.
- Products - Any items you sell that are apart of the Poolwerx Standard List or your local product database. You'll manage these in LightSpeed, and they'll automatically show up in Vital.
- Pricing - Product pricing in Vital is determined by Price Books in LightSpeed. If you have specialised pricing for services or products used in the field, you would set up a dedicated Field Price Book in LightSpeed, which Vital will then utilise.
- Specialised client pricing - For clients with unique pricing agreements, that you do not want to create a price book for, you can edit the pricing for products directly on the job recurrence within Vital. This allows for client-specific adjustments without managing a whole price book for an individual client.
Optimising you Product Workflow
- LightSpeed is the boss - When you create or update a product in LightSpeed, it automatically updates in Vital. Always initiate product changes in LightSpeed to ensure data consistency across the Evolution Platform.
- Don't edit in Vital - If you need to change a product, always do it in LightSpeed.
- Inactivating products in Vital - While you should not create, update or delete products in Vital, you can make certain products inactive so they don't appear on the app for technicians to add to invoices (e.g., your retail products that are only sold in-store). This helps declutter the technician's product list.
- Poolwerx Standard Products - These are products that need to stay in your system. If you don't use one, just mark it as "inactive" instead of deleting it.
Why isn't a new product I created in LightSpeed showing up in Vital?
Product sync from LightSpeed to Vital typically takes about 15 minutes. If it's been longer, ensure the product is marked as "active" in LightSpeed and check your internet connection. If you have made multiple or bulk updates, sometimes the sync can take longer. If the issue persists, contact Evo Support.
Can I delete a product in Vital?
No, you should not delete products in Vital. You can only mark them as "inactive" to prevent them from appearing for selection. Product deletion should be managed in LightSpeed, but consider the impact on not having the ability to access historical product movements and updates before deleting.
Related Guides & Next Steps
What's Next: Now that you understand product types, learn how to create them:
- Product Fields Guide - for detailed information on specific product fields and their purpose.
- Adding a New Product
External Resources:
- LightSpeed Support Centre (for advanced troubleshooting)
By understanding these basics, you're well on your way to becoming an Evo product pro!