Creating a product in the Network Store

Products are added under Products in the left-hand menu. A product holds the description and the rules; the variants inside it hold the prices. Give a product at least one variant or nobody can buy it.

The basics

Who can buy it

The audience decides which organisations see the product. Leave it open and everyone with access to the store can buy; restrict it and only the organisations you pick will see it at all. Use this for things that only apply to one brand, one country, or one tier of the network.

Buy it, be given it, or both

Under How do tribes get this, on the Details tab, the Tribes buy it from the storefront checkbox decides whether tribes can buy the product themselves. Ticked, the product appears in the store and a tribe can buy it. Unticked, it is hidden from the storefront, and the only way a tribe gets it is when you assign it.

Either way, your organisation can still put a subscription product on a tribe from Subscriptions, and the form says so under the checkbox. A subscription you assign bills exactly as though the tribe had bought it, and the tribe cannot cancel it.

Leave the checkbox ticked for a product that some tribes buy for themselves and others are given, such as a training course that head office pays for at new tribes. Untick it for things a tribe does not opt into — a marketing fund contribution, a mandatory software seat, a network levy. They still get the invoice and it still shows in their history; they simply were not the one who clicked Buy. See Assigning a subscription to your tribes for the steps.

What you ask at checkout

Customer fields collect what you need in order to actually deliver. Each field has a label, a type, and whether it is required. Ask for the minimum: every extra field is another reason a buyer abandons the order.

Fields can also be validated — restricted to certain email domains, matched against a pattern, required to be unique, or locked so they cannot be changed after purchase. Locking matters where the answer is the thing being sold, such as the email address a licence is issued against.

Whether these are asked once for the order or once per unit is set on the variant, with Collect fields per unit. Turn that on when each seat, shirt or ticket needs its own answers.

Fulfilment and notifications

• Production statuses — the stages this product moves through while you make or deliver it. Set them to match how your team actually works, so the Orders screen reflects reality rather than a generic pipeline.
• Notification users and emails — who is told when this product is ordered, on top of the store-wide recipients in Settings. This is how shirt orders reach the uniform supplier and event orders reach the events team.
• Cancellation rules — whether a buyer may cancel themselves and on what terms.
• Allowed payment methods — restrict this product to particular methods. Leave it open unless you have a reason.

Allocations

If buying this product means someone gets a place at something — a conference seat, a dinner, a shirt — link it to an allocation. Every purchase then adds an entry to that allocation's register, and one shared allocation gathers entries from every product that includes it.

A single product can include several allocations, which is how a conference package that bundles a seat, a dinner and a shirt fills three lists from one purchase.

Before you make it live

1. Check the variant prices, and whether the store is set to tax-included or tax-added.
2. Open Preview Storefront and read the product as a buyer would.
3. Buy it yourself once. It is the only reliable way to find a missing required field or a confusing question.
4. Confirm the right people are on the notification list.