Managing Products & Seasons
Uphance offers several methods to manage your products and your seasons. Depending on your business goals, you may choose from any one of these methods or use a combination of methods.
Two Types of Seasons
There are two types of Seasons that can be used within Uphance:
Seasonal or Time-Specific -These seasons are generally specific to a particular season (Spring, Summer, Fall or Winter) or a specific year (2018, 2019, 2020). And, they could be offered in one or more of those seasons or years. For example, your season name may be "2018 Brand Name" or "2018 Winter Collection".
Core or General - These seasons may be your "core products" that are available year-after year and not tied to a specific "seasons" of a year. For these, your season name would be more generic such as "Company Name Core Products". By using Core or Generic Season names, you will not need to worry about "merging", changing season names or anything else later should you want to clean up your data or carry over those products into another seasons or year.
Reporting & Sales History
Uphance bases all reporting and sales history on the Sales Order date and Sales Order season name at the time the order was placed. Any changes made after that time to the season name or product's season, will not impact the sales history or reports.
Merge, Change Product or Rename Season
For those products that are indeed Seasonal or Time-Specific, Uphance provides several methods of managing these products between seasons. Or, if you want to change a Seasonal or Time-Specific season to a more generic Season name, Uphance can help with that too.
Change Season Name - If ALL the products in your Season simply need a new season name, you can change the name of the season (e.g. from "2018 Winter" to "Core Collection"). As noted previously, all Sales Order history and inventory will remain with those products within the new season. Reporting for previous sales will reflect the old season name and reporting for new sales orders will reflect the new season name. However, if you are changing the name, you will no longer be able to filter by the old season name. Dashboard filters as an example, you would no longer filter by "2018 Winter" but could see those Sales by Year using the YTD tab. For more information on Changing Season names, see our Managing Seasons Knowledge Article.
Change Seasons on Products - You can edit each product and change the Season from the old season name to the new season name. Performing this step is purely "cosmetic" meaning it will simply allow your customers to see the new season label when they place an order. As noted previously, all Sales Order history and inventory will remain with those products at the time the order was placed. And, any new orders will reflect the new season name. This method is similar to the Change Season name method. The only difference is that it is done "per product" rather than for the entire season. You may have a need to only change some products within a Season to a new season name and not all products within that Season. If that is the case, using this method, you can update them one by one.
Merge Products - If you have Seasonal or Time-Specific products with the same Product Identifier across multiple seasons, you may decide you want to "merge" the products into fewer (or one) season and carry over the sales history and inventory for products. For more information see our Knowledge Article on Merging Products.