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Products

Products are the shared catalog names your team uses when you buy, make, stock, quote, sell, or produce items in Loupe Factory. A product can exist before you have stock on hand. Once stock exists, inventory items, orders, and production jobs can all refer back to that same product.

In day-to-day work, a product answers: what is this item? The related records answer what is happening with it right now, such as where stock is stored, what a customer ordered, or which production job is making it.

What a Product Represents

A product gives your team a consistent name to use across the platform. It can include the product name, short name, product type, and the shape or size language your team uses to describe the item.

A product type can also have a storefront description: the shopper-facing copy for the type as a whole. Each inventory item keeps its own description alongside it.

Use products when you want sales, inventory, and production teams to talk about the same item in the same way. This helps prevent mismatched order details, duplicate stock names, and confusion during production handoffs.

How Products Connect Loupe Factory

Products sit at the center of several daily workflows. They keep the commercial name, stock activity, order demand, and production work tied to the same item.

Product relationships

One product connects stock, sales, and production

The product gives every team the same item name. Related records show how that item is stocked, sold, or made.

Product catalog Product The reusable item name your team recognizes across Loupe Factory.
Name Type Shape Size
Inventory Inventory items Live stock records with tag IDs, weight, quantity, type, location, images, and status.
Orders Order items Customer demand that names what was requested, quoted, sold, or prepared for fulfillment.
Production Production job items Work in progress that uses product context to find source inventory and track output.

Products and Inventory Items

A product is the catalog identity. An inventory item is the actual stock record. For example, your team may have one product called Round Diamond, with many inventory items for different stones, sizes, weights, locations, and quality details.

Use this distinction when reviewing stock:

Aspect Product Inventory item
Represents The reusable item name your team recognizes The specific stock record your team can count, move, issue, or sell
Stock details Helps group related stock together Stores operational details such as tag ID, weight, quantity, type, location, image, and status
Availability Can exist before stock is available Exists when there is stock or tracked material in Loupe Factory
Storefront copy One description for the whole type, written by an admin. Its own description per lot, written by an admin or manager.

With the Shopify integration, each Finished lot on a Product becomes its own Shopify variant. The lot's Tag ID supplies the SKU. The Title option uses the lot's Product Label, falling back to the Tag ID when blank. Shopify's displayed variant title can include Color, such as LOT001 / Red. Each variant uses its own lot's quantity, prices, weight, and photo. Filled Quality, Size, Shape, Product Label, and supported industry attributes are sent as variant metafields. Products without Finished lots are excluded from pushes, even when already linked to Shopify.

A push also uses saved Shopify category and color mappings. Each Shopify product has one category, while each variant can have its own mapped Color. The integration still sends one variant per lot; it does not create every possible option combination.

Products and Orders

Orders use products to describe what a customer wants to buy. When a product is selected on an order item, sales and operations can keep the order tied to the right catalog item from quote through fulfillment.

This is useful when the same product appears across many orders. Teams can recognize demand faster, check whether matching inventory exists, and decide whether production work is needed.

Products and Production Job Items

Production job items use product context to describe what the team is making or processing. When a production job is created, selecting the right product helps Loupe Factory narrow the source inventory that can feed the job.

As work moves through production, the product connection helps teams understand which stock was issued, what output was received, and how rejected, scrapped, or wasted material relates back to the same product.

Product Details Page

The Product Details page gives users one place to analyze a product without jumping across separate lists. It is designed for managers and operators who need a clear view of product activity, related inventory, and recent stock movement.

From the Product Details page, users can:

  • review the product name and product image at the top of the page
  • open the product type's Media Gallery from the header to manage shared assets such as master 3D CAD models, spec sheets, engineering drawings, and assembly videos that apply to every lot of that type. On Professional and above, the same gallery can turn the product type's main image into product shots with AI.
  • read the product type's storefront description under its name. Hover over the excerpt to read the full text. Admins can click it to edit, or click Add Storefront Description when the type has none.
  • switch between inventory types, such as rough, finished, or materials and supplies
  • compare item count, total weight, average weight, and 30-day weight change
  • use the weight trend chart to see added and deducted inventory over time
  • review the related inventory items table
  • search, sort, and export product-specific inventory records to CSV
  • filter related records by finished type, materials and supplies type, shape, size, color, and location
  • move back to the full Inventory page when they need a broader stock view

If AI summaries are enabled for your workspace, the page can also summarize the product's inventory activity so teams can spot important changes faster.

Product visibility depends on role and location access. On Professional, Business, and Enterprise, admins can turn on Managers can use inventory from all locations in Organization Settings > Locations so Manager users can view and select products tied to inventory across every location. Members can only see products and inventory from their assigned location.

Only admins write the product type's description. Managers and members can read it.

Users with the Manager role can choose the product image from existing images on related inventory items. This keeps the product image tied to a real item photo and avoids a separate upload step.

For Shopify, a Products and stock push uses the product type's Storefront Description as the Shopify product description. If it is blank, the push uses the newest Finished inventory item on that Product with a saved Storefront Description. If neither source has copy, Shopify's existing description stays unchanged.

A pull fills the Product description when creating the Product or first linking one whose description is blank. Later pulls preserve it.

Each lot's description can sync both ways through the separate loupe_factory.variant_description metafield, which Loupe Factory creates when needed. Shopify's main product copy is not copied onto every lot. See How descriptions reach Shopify for setup and blank-value rules.

The same push sends the Product photo as the featured image, and each Finished lot's own photo as its variant image, when the photo was added in Loupe Factory. See Product and lot photos in Shopify for how photos are sent and displayed.

Only admins see the inventory export controls. Export CSV downloads the rows currently shown on the selected product tab, including the active search and filters. Admins who need every inventory record in the workspace can open All Inventory and use Export All CSV. See Exporting Inventory to CSV for row limits, included columns, and the email verification process.

Managing Products

Admins can go to Admin Settings > Product Settings to learn how to edit existing products or add new ones in Loupe Factory.

Admins can also write or generate the product type's storefront description from Product Settings or from the product page. See Storefront Descriptions.

Product setup works best when the catalog uses clear names, consistent product types, and shape or size language your whole team understands.

Next Steps