Articles (products & services)
The products and services you put on invoices and bills.
Articles are the items you sell or buy - products (goods) and services. They fill invoice and bill lines so you don't retype names, prices and VAT.
What an article holds
- A code, a name and a type (product or service).
- A default VAT and a unit (pcs, h, …).
- Whether it's for sale and/or for purchase, each with its own price.
- For anything physical, its net weight in kilograms - to the gram.
- Optionally, the revenue / expense accounts it posts to.
Net weight
Products and stock items can record what one unit weighs, in kilograms to three decimals. It is what a packing slip totals, and what a carrier bills on. Services have no weight - the field is not shown for them.
Leave it empty when you don't know. Empty means unrecorded, not weightless: a packing slip prints a dash on that line and says how many lines its total is missing, rather than quietly under-reporting the load.
A ready-made starter set is installed for your market; add your own anytime under Articles.
On an invoice line, pick an article and its description, price and VAT fill in automatically - you can still adjust them.
Loading many at once
Articles can be imported from an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV file instead of typed one at a time. Use Import on this page, or on Products / stock when the file is a list of stock items. Choose the file, say which column is the code, the name and the prices - it guesses from the headings - and the first rows are shown so you can check the match before anything happens.
- Only a code and a name are required; prices, unit, barcode and notes are optional.
- Sales price and purchase price are mapped separately, so a supplier's cost list and your own catalogue both work.
- Net weight can be mapped too - headings like Netokaal, Kaal or Weight are recognised, and 12,5 is read as 12.5 kg.
- Rows with no code or no name are skipped and listed with the reason - headings and blank lines in the file do not stop the import.
- Choose per import what happens to a code you already have: leave it as it is, or update it from the file.
Check first runs the whole import without writing anything and tells you exactly what would happen. Updating only changes the columns you mapped - anything the file does not mention is left as it was.