📦 Products and Variants
Products are the catalog items you offer to your customers. Each Product contains one or more Variants — the specific SKUs that are added to orders.
The Products gallery
The header shows three counters:
| Indicator | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Products | Number of Products in the catalog. |
| Variants | Total number of Variants across all Products. |
| Incomplete | Products with no Variants, no short description, or no long description. The tooltip shows the details. |
You can filter by name and by tag, and switch between gallery view and list view.
The difference between Product and Variant
- Product: the commercial container. It has a name, description, images, and can appear in your store or catalog. It's what the customer searches for.
- Variant: the specific item that is sold. It has a price, a margin, and is made up of one or more Pieces. It's what gets added to an order.
Example:
- Product: "Adjustable phone stand"
- Variant "Black PLA" → €12.90
- Variant "White PETG" → €15.90
A Product's detail view
When you open a Product you'll see:
- Name, short description, and long description (editable).
- Images (you can upload several).
- List of Variants with their Pieces, price, and margin.
From the detail view you can create, edit, and delete Variants. You can also manage its tags from the selector in the top bar (see below).
Tags
Tags help you organize and classify your products (by theme, collection, style… whatever you decide).
- They're inherited from the Pieces. Every time you add a Piece to a Product, it automatically picks up the tags of that Piece's Design. So when you build the Product out of your already-tagged Pieces, its tags appear on their own — without typing them by hand.
- You can add or remove more manually. The Tags selector sits in the top bar of the Product detail view: tick the ones you want to add or untick the ones that don't apply. Changes are saved when you click Save, just like the rest of the form.
- What you remove by hand is respected. Inheritance only adds tags when you add Pieces; it never deletes yours. If you remove an inherited tag, it won't come back on the next save (it would only return if you remove that Piece and add it again).
- They're there for filtering. In the Products gallery you can filter by one or more tags to find what you're after quickly.
- They travel to Etsy. If you publish the Product on Etsy, its tags are used as the listing's tags (Etsy allows up to 13).
Tags are shared with Designs: you create and manage them once and reuse them across the whole catalog. If one is missing, you can create it from the selector itself.
Configuring a Variant
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Title | Typed directly on the variant's row (click on it to edit it). It's short: 12 characters at most, e.g. "Black PLA" or "Pack x3". |
| SKU | Identifier code (auto-generated if left blank). |
| Pieces | One or more Pieces that make up this Variant (Pieces that compose this variant block). |
| Price | What the customer pays. |
| Margin | Calculated automatically: (Price − Cost) / Price × 100. |
The cost of the Variant (and therefore its margin) comes from adding up what its Pieces cost, but it is stored: it's a snapshot taken when the variant is saved, not a permanent calculation. While you're editing the variant you'll see it move instantly if you change the quantities; but if you edit a Piece from another screen, the variant can be left with the old number. That's what the Sync link at the end of this page is for. If this brings the margin below the recommended level, you'll see it in the color indicator.
When you change a Piece or a Design that's in use
If you save a change to a Piece or a Design that is already part of some Product, BolloPrint shows you a notice with the list of affected products and variants. It doesn't change anything for you — it's a reminder for you to review them (for example, in case the cost changed and you want to readjust the sale price).
Adding a Variant to an order
When creating or editing an order, in the items field search by Product or Variant name. The price is filled in automatically (you can adjust it for that specific order).
Who can manage Products?
Workers, Admins, and Owners can create and edit. Read-only users can only view.
When a variant's cost falls behind
A variant's Cost isn't typed in by hand: it comes from adding up what its pieces cost. But it's a snapshot taken on save, not a live calculation — so if you edit a piece afterwards, the variant keeps the old number.
Underneath the Cost field there's a small Sync link that re-reads the cost of the recipe's pieces. It only appears when that variant is genuinely out of date: if you don't see it, its cost already matches its pieces.
Two details about when you can use it:
- The variant has to be saved and free of pending changes. Sync reloads the whole variant from the server, so any unsaved edits would be lost. Save first and the link appears.
- Sync touches the cost and the suggested price. Your sale price is never modified — that one's yours.
If you have several variants to review, there's no need to go one by one: under Settings → Costs → Summary there's a recalculation of the whole catalog that brings them all up to date at once, and the Outdated variants card on that same screen tells you how many there are.