Packaging

Packaging covers the boxes, trays, clamshells, pallet caps, and similar materials used to pack a product. This page covers two things: the catalog of packaging items itself, and how to assign those items to a specific product.

The Packaging Catalog

Every packaging item used anywhere in the system — assigned to a product, added to a Packaging Templates template, or received into inventory — starts as an entry in this catalog.

Field Name Description
Name The packaging item’s name
Description A short description of the item
Default Cost The default cost used when this item is assigned to a product or template
Default Rate The default rate charged for this item
Equivalence Factor Conversion factor used when this item’s quantity needs to be expressed in a different unit

Deleting an item removes it from the active list (it’s soft-deleted, not permanently erased) so historical records that reference it stay intact.

Assigning Packaging to a Product

Once a packaging item exists in the catalog, it can be assigned to a specific product from the product’s Packaging tab (Packing Shed > Products > Products > [product] > Packaging). Once assigned, packaging inventory is automatically drawn down whenever that product is run through production — you don’t have to manually deduct it.

There are two ways to assign packaging to a product:

Method What It Does
Add individual items Pick a packaging item directly and set its Per (Each or Flat) and Qty on the product’s line-item table
Apply a Packaging Template Search for and apply an existing Packaging Templates template — this adds all of that template’s line items to the product at once

You can mix both — apply a template and then add or adjust individual items on top of it.

On the main (non-Packaging) tab of a product’s edit screen, there’s a separate Packaging Weight field. This is just the tare weight of the product’s packaging, used to net out gross weight when it’s received — it has nothing to do with packaging inventory and doesn’t pull from the items assigned on the Packaging tab.

Permissions

Permission What It Controls
Settings > Packaging Access to this screen