Catalog Guide

Your catalog is the master register of everything you test — finished products, the raw materials and packaging they're made from, and the environmental points you monitor. Anything you send to the lab lives here first.

In one sentence: set an item up once in the catalog, keep its details and history in one place, and send it to the lab in a click.

The four sections

You'll find all four under Catalog in the left-hand menu.

How work flows

Create the item  →  Fill in its details  →  Create a version  →  Send to the lab

1. Create the catalog entry (name + type).
2. Fill in its field values on the dossier.
3. Create a version to freeze its state for testing.
4. Send to the lab — a request is raised and linked back to the item.

New here? Jump to First-time setup at the bottom for the full order of operations, including the admin steps.

Reading a dossier

Every catalog item opens onto a dossier — one page that tells its whole story. All four sections share the same layout, so once you know one, you know them all.

• Overview strip — the headline facts (reference, type, version status, key fields, completeness) at a glance.
• Details tab — every field defined for this item, with its current value. Fields marked with a red asterisk (*) are required.
• Versions tab — the full history: each version, its status, who created it and when.
• Products only: extra Raw Materials and Packaging tabs show what the product is made of.
• Raw materials and packaging only: a Lots tab tracks every dated delivery of that item — see the Manufacturing Guide.

Two buttons sit at the top of every dossier:

• Manage — opens the full editor where you fill in field values, manage versions, and build composition. This is where you make changes.
• Send to lab — raises a lab request for this item and takes you straight to it.

Why the split? The dossier is your read-only "cover sheet" — clean and shareable. All editing happens behind Manage, so you never change something by accident while just looking things up.

The completeness bar

Every item shows a completeness bar — the share of its required fields that are filled in.

It only counts required fields — the ones that truly matter for traceability — so 100% means "safe to test", not "every optional box ticked."

Products

A product is your finished, market-ready item.

Create one: Catalog → Products → New product → enter a name, pick its type (e.g. Generic Product, Cosmetic Product), optionally link a system reference under Based on, and save.

Then open it and use Manage to:

• Fill in field values on the Details tab.
• Build its composition — add the raw materials and packaging it's made from, on the Raw Materials and Packaging tabs. (Remove a component the same way.)

Types tailor the fields. A Cosmetic Product asks for a Responsible Person and CPNP reference; a plain Generic Product doesn't. Your admin sets which type carries which fields — see Types.

Composition is live. What you see is the product's current make-up. What gets tested is the composition frozen into a version — see the Versioning Guide.

Raw Materials

The ingredients and inputs that go into your products — each with its own dossier, fields, and version history.

Create one: Catalog → Raw Materials → New raw material → name + type → save, then Manage to fill in details like supplier, CAS number and grade.

One material, many products. A raw material can feed any number of products. You link it from the product side (on the product's Raw Materials tab), so the material itself stays a clean, reusable entry.

Deliveries live on the Lots tab. Each time a batch of this material arrives, record it as a lot on the item's Lots tab — batch/lot number, supplier, and expiry date included. See the Manufacturing Guide for how lots feed production.

Packaging

The physical containers and packaging components for your products.

Create one: Catalog → Packaging → New packaging → name + type → save, then Manage to record material, food-contact status and recyclability.

Link packaging to a product from the product's Packaging tab — one packaging entry can serve many products. Deliveries of a packaging item are tracked the same way as raw materials, via its Lots tab.

Environmental monitoring points

Fixed locations or conditions you check on a schedule — not a product or ingredient, but the space around the process (a surface, a water inlet, an air point).

Create one: Catalog → Environmental → New environmental → a descriptive name (e.g. Kitchen Surface A — north wall faucet) + type → save.

Environmental points work a little differently: each version is one test event.

• v1 — January swab of Kitchen Surface A
• v2 — February swab of Kitchen Surface A
• v3 — March swab …

Each version records that visit's readings (who sampled, temperature, observations), then goes to the lab.

Finding items

Every catalog page gives you:

• 🔎 a search box — find by name;
• status filter — show only published, tested, in-testing or draft items;
• stats cards — live totals across the top;
• a view switch (the ⚙️ gear) — flip between a dense table and a visual card grid, and choose how much detail to show.

Click any item to open its dossier.

Types — the fields behind each item

Every catalog item belongs to a type, and the type decides which fields the item has.

• Dairy Product → pH, fat %, protein %, shelf life
• Cosmetic Product → Responsible Person, CPNP reference
• Surface Swipe → location, sampler, temperature, time

Types come in two flavours:

• System types (a "System" badge) — shipped by the platform, shared by everyone. The platform ships neutral generics (Generic Product, Generic Raw Material, …) plus a few industry templates like Cosmetic Product.
• Company types — created by your organisation for your own needs.

Need a new field or type? Types are managed by your platform administrator under Platform Admin → Subject Types. Ask them to add it — you don't have to.

System references — "Based on"

Some items carry a System badge: standard references predefined by the platform (a common raw material, a standard monitoring point). When you create your own item you can link it to one via Based on — a simple "ours is derived from the standard" pointer that shows on the item. System items themselves can only be edited by administrators.

First-time setup

Setting things up from scratch? This is the recommended order.

Administrator

1. Create field definitions — Platform Admin → Field Definitions.
2. Create types and attach their fields — Platform Admin → Subject Types.
3. (Optional) Create system reference items — Platform Admin → Subjects.

Your team

4. Create your raw materials.
5. Create your packaging.
6. Create your products and link their raw materials and packaging.
7. Fill in field values for each item (via Manage).
8. Create a version and send it to the lab when ready — see the Versioning Guide.

Tip: work bottom-up — materials and packaging first, then products — so a product's components already exist when you go to link them.