Product Catalog - Track Every Shampoo, Blade and Tool

Running out of a critical product mid-groom is every groomer's small nightmare. The deshedding shampoo you use for a specific client's allergy-prone Labrador. The size 10 blade that's been getting blunt for a week. The styptic powder that only gets checked when someone nicks a nail. These things are rarely forgotten; they're just rarely tracked until they're missed.

A product catalog won't prevent every out-of-stock moment, but it removes most of them. The goal isn't inventory perfection; it's enough visibility that you reorder a week before you actually need to, instead of three days after.

What is the product catalog in GroomSome?

The product catalog is a structured list of everything you buy, use, and resell in the salon: shampoos, conditioners, colognes, blades, scissors, accessories. Each product carries a price, an article number, a supplier, a current stock level, and a usage history tied to appointments and invoices.

You can add a product by hand or import a whole list from a file. Once it's in, every invoice that includes that product decrements the stock automatically. Low-stock alerts fire at the threshold you set, not the day you run out.

Why a product catalog matters for groomers

The value isn't just "don't run out". It's that over a year, a proper catalog makes the business visibly more professional: to your accountant, your suppliers, and yourself.

• Stop panicked ordering. Low-stock alerts give you a week's heads-up, not a day's.
• See your cost of goods. For every grooming service, what's the actual product cost per dog? The catalog has the answer.
• Identify shrinkage. A bottle of cologne "disappears" every week. The catalog shows that. Usually it's a missed invoice or a missed decrement, but sometimes it's not.
• Faster reordering. Supplier info on each product means the next order is a two-minute email, not a scramble.
• Resale tracking. If you sell products to clients (brush, cologne, ear cleaner), the catalog tracks revenue too, often a quietly significant income line.
• Annual stock check. An annual inventory is a couple of hours with a list and a counter, not a weekend with a clipboard.

Key capabilities

• Product creation and management: add, edit, archive without losing history.
• Product import from file: CSV or Excel upload for an existing list.
• Pricing per product: cost, resale price, margin.
• Article number / SKU: for stock management and supplier orders.
• Supplier information: name, contact, last-order date per product.
• Stock level monitoring: real-time decrement from invoice lines.
• Low-stock alerts: threshold per product; the system flags when you're close.
• Inventory value calculation: total stock value for accounting and insurance.
• Usage history: every product is tied to the appointments and invoices where it was used.
• Multi-supplier support: track the same product from different suppliers for price comparison.

How to get started

A perfect catalog is not the goal; a working one is. Most salons have a usable setup within an afternoon.

1. List your top 20 products. The ones you actually use weekly. Don't try to catalog every product you've ever bought.
2. Add supplier info for the items you reorder regularly.
3. Set a low-stock threshold per product. A rule of thumb: enough for ten working days.
4. Attach products to invoices. Even for services where the product cost is "small"; over a year, "small" adds up.
5. Check weekly. Five minutes on a Monday. Reorder anything in the alert list.

Resale as a quiet income line

Many salons give away products they should be selling. If a client loves the cologne you use, selling them a bottle at a margin is not commerce-first; it's service. A proper catalog makes that easy:

• Product listed with a resale price.
• Add to the invoice, one line.
• Stock decrements automatically.
• Revenue feeds the dashboard.

After six months of selling to 20% of regulars, resale often pays for the software and more.

Inventory is not the glamorous part of grooming. But it's where a surprising amount of money quietly leaks. A list of what you have, what you paid, what you sold, and when you need to reorder: it's a small discipline that replaces a lot of small crises. A Friday afternoon with no unnecessary supply drama is a better Friday afternoon.