Bringing your products across
One pipeline. Nothing written until you say so.
Whether you start from a ready-made pack, a spreadsheet your wholesaler sent, or an export from an old till system, it goes through the same steps: inspect, map, preview, then commit. A starter pack is not a special case. It uses this exact pipeline too, which is how you know it behaves the same way your own file will.
The four steps
- Choose a file. CSV to begin with, with a downloadable template in CSV and XLSX so you know the shape that works best.
- Map the columns. Common headings are recognised automatically; anything ambiguous is put to you rather than guessed.
- Preview. A full breakdown of what will be created, updated, left unchanged or flagged for review, before a single row is written.
- Commit. Only now does anything change, and the whole batch is recorded so it can be reviewed afterwards.
"Check before importing" is not a slogan here. The preview and the commit run the same calculation, so the numbers you were shown are exactly what happens next.
What a column can mean
A product needs an identifier, such as a product code or SKU, and a name. Everything else is optional and recognised where present: barcode, PLU, category, price, whether it is sold by count or by weight, a unit label, a proposed VAT category, whether it is active, and whether it is a favourite.
Column headings rarely match exactly, so common variants are matched automatically, case and spacing aside. Where two of your columns could plausibly mean the same thing, the mapping step asks rather than choosing for you. Once you have mapped a file the way you like, that mapping can be saved and reused the next time a file with the same headings arrives.
What is handled carefully
Leading zeroes survive
A barcode or SKU is kept as the text it is. Nothing here quietly turns "007" into 7.
Duplicates are reviewed
The same identifier twice in one file is flagged with both row numbers. Neither one is silently preferred.
Nothing is deleted by omission
A product missing from a re-import is reported, never removed. Deactivating a product is a deliberate action.
VAT is a proposal, not a fact
An imported VAT category waits for your explicit confirmation. It is never applied as configuration on its own.
Formula-looking text stays text
A product name that happens to start like a spreadsheet formula is imported as plain text and flagged, never executed.
Re-importing is safe
Running the same file again reports "unchanged" rather than piling up duplicate proposals.
After it lands
Every import is kept as its own batch: what it created, what it changed, and what it left alone. Products remember which batch brought them in, so a batch can be reviewed, and reversed if nothing else has come to depend on it.
Starter packs work the same way
A starter pack for a café, bakery, pub or market stall is an invented catalogue that goes through this identical pipeline: same mapping, same preview, same batch record. Its prices and categories are editable examples, and its VAT values are proposals, exactly like a file of your own.