Welcome to the bMobile Tutorial Video Series.
In this video, we will go over what Product Classes & Product Types are, how to add and edit them on the bMobile desktop application, 3 things to keep in mind when working with Classes & Types, and lastly, how using Product Types can dramatically impact efficiency and workflow when creating invoices using an Android device out on the field.
So let’s quickly go over what Product Classes & Types are. Using the bMobile desktop application, you can quickly and easily group inventory items or products together by assigning them to a previously established “Class” or “Type” that you can create and name whatever you would like. This can be very helpful for your drivers making sales out on the field and for group pricing purposes when wanting to apply discounts/pricing to a group of similar items.
To access your Product Classes list, go to the Inventory Menu and click on “Product Class”, here.
To add a Product Class, click on the Plus sign at the top and then add a name and description (the description is optional).
To add items from your inventory list to the Product Class, you can click the “Add Multiple Inventory” button near the top and pick the items you want to add.
If you are looking for a specific item, you can search any section by clicking on the “Contains” field. You can easily sort in alphanumeric order on any of the columns by clicking on the column header.
You can either pick them one by one, like this, or you can easily add them all at once by pressing and holding the control (or “Ctrl”) button and then clicking on the ones you want to add, or, if you want to quickly select several in a row, you can do so by holding down shift and clicking once, like this.
To edit a current Product Class, double click on the one you want to edit, or highlight and then click “edit” at the top.
Product Types are added and edited in the exact same way. The only difference is that there is a “Display Order” option when adding a Product Type that lets you order your Product Type list in the way you want it to look. This is especially helpful for the drivers out on the field, as they can find inventory items much quicker than scrolling through a large list of inventory items or even Product Types. If you leave this field blank, the default in the system is to sort by Alphanumeric order.
Also, you can assign a Product Class or Product Type to an inventory item while editing or adding an item in the Inventory Menu by clicking on the green magnifying glass here or here and choosing the Product Class or Product you’d like.
Here’s a couple of things to keep in mind when dealing with Product Classes and Product Types:
Within Product Classes, an Item can only exist in a single Product Class, and same for the Product Types. You can have items that are assigned a specific Class and Type. Let’s say your company sells dairy products. You can’t have the same type of yogurt item (like an 8 ounce blueberry yogurt for example) in two different Product Types at once. If you assign it to a Product Type (let’s call it Yogurt), and then later assign it to another one called Small Yogurt, it will move from the first Product Type to the second one! All the while, the blueberry yogurt could also be assigned to the “Dairy” Product Class.
You get to decide how intricate you want to get. Let’s say you have all kinds of different yogurt products: plain yogurt, strawberry yogurt, large containers, small containers, etc. You can create one Product Type that has all of these different yogurt products assigned to it, but let’s say you have dozens of different yogurts Items in your inventory that are in large yogurt containers and then a lot that are in small yogurt containers: you could decide to create two separate Product Types called “Large Yogurt” and “Small Yogurt”. Like I mentioned earlier, you get to decide how detailed or granular you would like to get. Remember, Product Classes and Product Types are meant to help structure and group different products together to make it easier to find them.
You can only have unique Product Classes or Product Types, meaning you can’t have two Product Types called “Yogurt” (which, by the way, “Small Yogurt” and “Large Yogurt” are two different Product Types because of the differentiation of that first word.)
If you want to delete an item from the Product List, you have to make sure to highlight the whole row by clicking on this gray area over here and then right click in that same area and then selecting the “Delete” option. Remember, if the whole row is not highlighted or if you right click in the wrong spot, the delete option will not appear.
If you want to delete the actual Product Class or Type (like as in our previous example, if you no longer want “Large Yogurt” and “Small Yogurt”, but just a generic “Yogurt” Product Type, you will have to first delete all the items from within the Product Type, then Click on “SAVE”, then click on the delete button. You have to do this extra step to disassociate the specific items from the Product Type, so that you can then delete it.
In order to see any changes you make take effect in the Product Class or Product Type list, make sure to click on the “Refresh” button at the top.
Lastly, we would like you to see how the mobile device out in the field will show and group the products based on the Product Type. (This specifically only applies to Product Types NOT Product Classes.
Let’s say a store owner is asking your driver for an extra container of strawberry yogurt this time around. The driver knows he has a few extra on the truck and he wants to add that to the order. Based on how you set up your Product Types, will determine what he sees on his device.
The Product Type list is triggered by the “Add Item” button on the device and it will first show Product Types of items that are currently on the truck, unless the driver chooses the “Show All” option, which will show all Product Types.
The best way to find an item on the device is to use the search bar at the top. In this case, he could search yogurt, or strawberry, and all the Product Types that have an item with that in their title or description will come up, like this.
He can then quickly select the correct Product Type and then the item that he would like to add to the order.
Product Types also come in handy if you are adding several items to an order at once that all come from the same Product Type. Let’s say he wants a dozen of each type of yogurt you have. The driver can easily click on the Yogurt Product Type, and then quickly put in the quantities for each item, like this.
To recap, In this video, we have gone over what a Product Class is, and what a Product Type is, how to add, edit and delete them, as well as how Product Types look on the device. As you can see, the goal of this tool is to help you organize and categorize your inventory list into a system that works best for your company.
As always, make sure to reach out to your bMobile Implementation Consultant if you have any specific questions.
Thanks and have a good day!