Add several items at once

What was asked for

A cafe owner wanted to add many items by hand, the way you would fill rows in a spreadsheet. Items went in one at a time, each followed by a separate step for where it is kept, who supplies it, its price and its units. The only way to add many at once was a file, read by the assistant.

How Add several works

Add several is beside New item on the Items page. Each row is one item and only the name is needed. The columns shown are what it is counted in, its supplier and price, and its minimum and par. More columns adds the pack it is bought in, tags, how often it is checked and, with more than one location, which one.

Enter moves down a row and Tab moves across. Copy a block of cells from a spreadsheet and paste it into any cell, and it fills in across and down from there.

Seeing each row before it is saved

Under every name it says what will happen. A new item says so. An item you already have keeps its own unit, tags and checks, and its minimum and par are filled only where they are blank. A supplier you already have under a slightly different name is used rather than added twice. A row with a problem, such as a minimum above its par or the same name as another row, is marked, and Add waits until it is fixed.

After adding

Each item says whether it is new or was already there, with a link to it, and one Undo takes back the whole list. The rows are kept in your browser until the list is added, so a refresh does not lose them. It follows the same rules as importing a file, and it works whether or not the assistant is on.