When the Degreaser Runs Out at Bath Time
A cattery running back-to-back grooming appointments cannot absorb a supply outage mid-morning. The de-greaser that goes empty on a Persian with a show coat scheduled for Thursday becomes a operational problem, a client relations problem, and a last-minute delivery surcharge problem simultaneously. The Status in Inventory field in this template exists precisely to prevent that sequence.
Eight status options — Planning, Delivered, In Stock From, Awaiting Delivery, Need, Old Stock, Do Not Replace, and Undecided — create a supply pipeline view that a shopping list cannot. "Awaiting Delivery" means you've already ordered. "Need" means you haven't. "Old Stock" means the product is still present but was replaced by a successor. "Do Not Replace" means you've made a deliberate decision to discontinue a product line. These distinctions matter when you're managing a product inventory that includes branded shampoos, conditioners, leave-in conditioners, and degreasers across multiple supplier relationships.
The Vendor and Brand Cross-Links
The Brand, Where Purchased, and Category fields all link to external library entries rather than storing text inline. This is the multi-library architecture doing what it's designed to do: when a brand supplies twelve products, the brand record lives once. When a supplier carries products from multiple categories, the supplier record lives once. A change to a supplier's contact information or delivery terms updates everywhere that supplier appears, rather than requiring a manual update to every product record where that supplier is mentioned.
The sub-category field handles the within-category specificity that matters for reorder decisions. Shampoo and leave-in conditioner are not interchangeable even within the same brand line. A coat destined for a show ring requires a specific build sequence — shampoo formulated for the coat type, conditioner appropriate for the texture, and a leave-in product calibrated to the finishing requirement. Tracking those separately in the inventory means you can see at a glance that you have three bottles of shampoo and zero leave-in conditioner, rather than four products in the "grooming" category.
The Barcode Fields as Reorder Infrastructure
Two barcode fields: one for the product's own UPC, one for a Google search barcode scan. The separation is deliberate — the product barcode identifies the specific SKU for direct reorder or supplier comparison. The search barcode enables rapid product research when a supplier changes product codes or when you're evaluating a substitute product in-store.
Price and Purchase Date attached to each record create a cost-per-unit history. When a shampoo supplier raises prices, comparing the current price against the purchase history in the record shows the actual cost increase over time — not a remembered impression but a calculated difference. For a cattery managing grooming product costs as part of service pricing, that data is the input for a price review conversation.
The Needed boolean is the shopping list generator. Filter all records where Needed = true and Status ≠ Awaiting Delivery. That is the order list. The URL field attached to each record is the link to the product page. Receipt scan links connect each purchase back to the financial record.