Setting Up Your Product List, Ugly First
Okay. New module. We're building the actual inventory tracker now, and this first lesson is where I need you to fight your instincts a little.
Your instinct is going to be to make it pretty. Pick a nice header color, maybe a font, center everything up. I need you to not do that yet.
Build it ugly first. Make it pretty last.
I say this every single time I teach this class because it's the number one thing that slows people down. They spend an hour on colors before a single formula works. Then they're mad the spreadsheet "doesn't do anything" and honestly, yeah, of course it doesn't, you spent the hour on colors.
So today: ugly, functional, boring. Pretty comes way later, if at all. Some of my best sheets are still ugly and I don't care.
Start with one tab
Open your copy (not your master, your copy, we covered this) and pick one tab. Call it Products. Nothing clever.
Across the top row, type these column headers, one per cell:
- Product Name
- SKU or ID (some kind of short code, doesn't have to be fancy)
- Category
- Cost (what you paid)
- Price (what you sell it for)
- Quantity on Hand
- Reorder Point (how low is too low)
That's it. Seven columns. If you're staring at this thinking you need twelve more, you probably don't, not yet. You can always add a column later. Adding is easy. Ripping out a bunch of columns you never used is annoying and it makes you feel bad about past-you for no reason.
Type in your real products
Not placeholder stuff. Not "Product 1, Product 2." Your actual products, actual names, actual numbers. This is tedious, I'm not going to pretend it's fun. If you've got a lot of SKUs, do a chunk now and a chunk tomorrow. Don't try to input three hundred items in one sitting, your brain will start making typos and you won't catch them.
While you're typing, keep your categories consistent. If you type "Candles" for one and "candle" lowercase for another, your sheet is going to treat those as two different things later when we sort and filter. Pick a way to spell it and stick with it. I learned this one the hard way more than once.
Now, about the ugly part
Here's what I mean by ugly, specifically. Don't bold anything yet. Don't add borders. Don't pick a header color. Don't merge cells to make a fancy title banner across the top, please, that one causes more grief than almost anything else people try early on.
Just get the data in, correctly, in plain black text on a plain white background. It'll look like a boring list because it is a boring list. That's the goal.
A live example of why this matters
I want to tell you about the first time I demoed conditional formatting in front of a class. This was a couple years back, one of my earlier times teaching. I was feeling good, moving fast, and I typed the formatting rule backwards. Instead of highlighting cells that were LOW on stock, I told it to highlight everything that WASN'T low on stock.
The whole sheet turned red. All of it. Every row, every cell, red as a stop sign.
I just stood there for a second, then laughed and said "sooo, that's what NOT to do," and fixed it right there in front of everyone. Nobody minded. Actually more people remembered that mistake than remembered the correct version I'd planned to show. There's something about watching the wrong thing happen and then getting fixed that sticks in your brain better than watching it go perfectly the first time.
I bring this up because that mistake happened because I was moving fast and feeling confident, which is exactly the mood that gets people into trouble on this lesson too. You'll be typing along, feel good about it, and skip a column or fat-finger a price. It happens. Keep going. We'll catch it later when we check numbers against reality, which we always do, every time, no exceptions.
A word on quantity on hand
Whatever number you put in that column right now, it needs to match what's actually sitting on your shelf or in your garage or your storage unit up by the point of the mountain, wherever you keep stuff. Don't guess. Don't round. If you don't know the real number, go count it, or at least mark the cell so you remember to come back and fix it. A guessed number today becomes a decision you regret in March.
Before next time
Get your Products tab built with all seven headers and as many real products typed in as you can stand to do in one sitting. Doesn't need to be finished, it needs to be started, ugly and true.