Documentation

Products – Overview

Learn how to correctly configure your products so that orders can be processed smoothly.

This page describes products, including required and recommended fields. Plus, we introduce the concepts of production methods which is where the real power of Print Trail lies.

Required fields

As a minimum, each product requires the following fields:

  • Product title
  • Product type. One of:
    • book
    • poster
    • leaflet
    • brochure
    • dust jacket
    • cd
    • dvd
    • other
  • A Product identifier. One or more of:
    • sku
    • gtin
    • isbn-13
    • isbn10
    • ean
    • upc

Other key information

Other Key product information includes:

  • Price
  • Description
  • Status

Dimensions & Weight

For your orders’ shipping to be calculated, it is essential that each of your products that has inventory enabled also has dimensions and weight information entered accurately.

The fields are on each product’s ‘Details’ tab > ‘Dimensions & Weight’ panel:

  • Length (amount, e.g. 11)
  • Width (amount, e.g. 11)
  • Height (amount, e.g. 11)
  • Size units (one of : mm, cm, in)
  • Weight (amount, e.g. 260)
  • Weight units (one of : g, kg, lbs)

👉 You can select which weight and dimension units to use, per product.

Images

You can optionally upload images to your product.

The primary image is indicated by a star. To change which image is primary, click through to a full-size version, then click ‘Make primary’.

Production settings

Each product has up to two production methods:

Each of these production methods can be enabled or disabled. Only when enabled will the production method be used in orders.

Product status

Each product has one of three statuses:

Book data

If you select product type = book, a few book-specific fields become available on a product:

  • ISBN-13 and ISBN-10: product barcode IDs for books (See ISBNs)
  • Authors
  • Subtitle
  • Binding: e.g. ‘Perfect bound’
  • Number of pages: e.g. 200
  • Publication date: e.g. 2020-11-30
  • Language: e.g. English

Customs data

Sometimes, customs will return orders which do not have complete customs paperwork. Therefore, these fields are necessary for international orders so we recommend they are completed for all your products.

  • Customs description
  • Country of manufacture
  • HS Tariff Code (AKA the ‘commodity code’)
  • Cost (the wholesale cost to purchase the product. Enter this in all currencies)

Note: it’s also essential you also add accurate dimensions & weight for each inventory product.

What is ‘Print-on-demand’ and ‘Inventory’?

  • ‘Print-on-demand’ and ‘Inventory’ are production methods – ways that an order line can be fulfilled. Inventory is physical stock, and print-on-demand means ‘printed to order’.
  • Each product can be configured to use one or both production methods
  • Inventory takes precedence: If inventory is enabled for a product, and an order’s shipping address matches a configured shipping rule for the product (see ‘Inventory’ help page), then the order will be fulfilled from inventory stock, not print-on-demand.
  • To use a mix of inventory and print-on-demand for a product, set one or more inventory rules for the specific shipping zones. Orders to any other shipping zones will be fulfilled via print-on-demand (as long as print-on-demand is enabled and approved for the product).
  • To only use print-on-demand for a product, make sure inventory is set to ‘disabled’.

👉 The inventory and print-on-demand settings are per-product, giving you fine-grained control over how your orders are fulfilled per shipping zone.

For more details on how the two production methods work, see our ‘Inventory’ and ‘Print-on-demand’ help pages.

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