Products in nouz are an optional convenience — you can run the whole app on manual entries forever. But once you set up your top-selling items as products, the daily close-out shrinks from "type cash, type card, estimate COGS" to "pick product, type quantity" — and Statistics starts ranking your catalogue by which one is actually carrying the shop.
01 Why bother with products
Three reasons it's worth the five-minute setup for your top sellers:
- COGS auto-fills. Sell 80 cappuccinos today, nouz computes 80 × €0,42 = €33,60 of COGS automatically. No mental math at close-out.
- Margin ranking unlocks. Statistics can't rank products you haven't set up. The product performance card only shows items with product-level data.
- Price experiments become measurable. If you bump cappuccino price by 50 cents next month, you can compare margin contribution before and after — only if you have product-level history.
02 The four fields
On Products → + Add product:
- Name. What you call it in your head. "Cappuccino", "Pain au chocolat".
- Sale price. Gross — what the customer pays. VAT included.
- COGS per unit. What it costs you to serve one. Beans + milk + cup + lid.
- Tax rate. Defaults to your business default. Override if this product has a different rate (takeaway food, books).
03 A worked example
A cappuccino, served at the counter:
Behind the scenes, every time you log a cappuccino sale, nouz reads the snapshot of that product's sale price and COGS at the moment you set it up. Subtract VAT (20% of €3,80 = €0,63), subtract COGS (€0,42), and your margin per cup is €2,75 before transaction fees. Sell 80 of them and your day's gross margin from cappuccinos alone is €220.
04 Start with your top five
You don't need every SKU. Most owners get 80% of their margin signal from the top five products. Start with those — the ones you sell the most of — and add the long tail later as you have time. Until then, log the rest as manual revenue (no product) for the daily total.
A typical café's top five: cappuccino, espresso, drip coffee, pain au chocolat, sandwich. A salon's top five: cut, colour, blow-dry, beard trim, gel polish. A small retail shop's top five depends entirely on what you sell, but you know what they are. Set those up first.
05 The snapshot rule
This snapshot behaviour is deliberate. It means a price bump or a COGS update going forward doesn't silently rewrite your past P&L. Your March numbers always reflect March prices, even if you change everything in October. Your accountant likes this; your future self likes this when you cross-reference an old VAT return.
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