Intro to Products

Products are specific physical items tracked in various transactions in OpenBoxes, such as purchase orders, shipments, and inventory. Each product has a unique auto-generated code.

Knowing how products are entered into the system is a good way to understand how OpenBoxes manages inventory.

Different Types of Products

Let's take a tour of the inventory browser to see the different types of products.

• In the Global Search Bar at the Top Menu Bar, type "Syringe." You will notice many options will populate below the search bar.

  

  
  
• From the displayed list, you can do two of the following actions:
  • Select one of the populated option which will take you to the product's electronic stock card with detailed information about the product, OR
  • Just hit the enter key on your keyboard. This will take you to the Inventory browser with pre-loaded list of all products with the word "syringe."

• After typing the word 'syringe' hit enter on your keyboard to load the inventory browser.

  

  As you can see, when you perform this exercise, this product comes in different volumes, different gauges, different materials, may be produced by different manufacturers, and on and on the differences go.

Ideally, this exercise has demonstrated that there are MANY different types of medical products, even when looking at a single type of product, like a syringe.

To differentiate these vast differences, OpenBoxes provides two opportunities for users to drill down into the specific product they are looking for:

• OB Product Codes
• Specific Naming Conventions for Products

The OpenBoxes Code

1. Similar to a manufacturer or vendor reference number, each product in OB is assigned an alphanumeric identifier that is specific to that exact product.
2. Products are "generic", meaning we might have many different manufacturer codes and sources for the same product
   1. If you order 1 million 4” steel nails from a vendor, they may send you 500,000 that were made by Manufacturer #1, 250,000 made by Manufacturer #2, and 250,000 made by Manufacturer #3.
   2. In OB, we would keep track of all 3 batches under the same product, "Steel nails". We would note the sources in the sources tab
3. Knowing the OB code can be helpful for you to search for the product in the Global Search box in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
4. The user can type in any keyword from any part of the product description, vendor name, manufacturer name, or OB code. 
5. The easiest way to find the exact product you are looking for is to type in the 4-5-digit OB Code if you know it!

👁View and Search

To access the Products List Page, on the Top Menu Bar, click on Products > List Products

On the List page, you have various filters you can use to narrow your list:

• Product Name or Code in the Search Bar
• Category
• GL Account
• Formulary
• Tags
• Product Family
• Created Date Range

Clear all applied filters by clicking on Clear or remove individual filters by clicking on the 'x' for each filters.

Create and Edit Products

Only users with Admin permissions can create and edit products. For instructions, refer to Create a Product. For more information about user permissions, refer to Intro to user permissions.