/
Item Management

Item Management

Overview

The Item Management page is your main hub for managing your store's product catalog in UltraCart. From this central location, you can view, search, organize, and modify your items. This page is essential for day-to-day product operations, whether you’re adjusting a price, uploading new inventory, or managing options.

You'll also find a suite of tools at the top of the page, allowing you to take action on multiple items at once—such as importing data, generating barcodes, creating kits, or deleting items. This guide walks you through each available feature to help you work more efficiently.

Core Concepts:

  • Item: A single product you sell in your store.

  • Item ID: A unique identifier assigned by you to each item (used internally and in links).

  • SKU (Stock Keeping Unit): A unique code used to track inventory and sales.

  • Folder: A way to group and organize items in your catalog.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have an active UltraCart store.

  • You must be logged into the UltraCart administrative dashboard.

Navigation

To view, add or edit your store items, log in to your account and navigate to:

Main Navigation → Items → Item Management

image-20250326-192025.png

Understanding the Item List View

The Item List View displays your items with key details:

  • Columns shown: Item ID, Description, Cost, and Actions

  • Actions: Use the action icons to perform tasks such as editing, deleting, or copying items.

image-20250326-160604.png

The Item ID, Description and Cost are entered when the item is created. The Action icons, when clicked, will take you to new screens with the appropriate information.


Items Section Screen

At the top of the page, you'll find a toolbar with icons for performing batch actions. These tools include:
Add, Import, Export, Add StoreWide Option, Generate Barcodes, Move, Copy, Search, Tools, and Delete.

image-20250326-170706.png

New Item

Use the Add icon to create new items, folders, or kits. If your catalog is empty, you'll see a prominent "Add Item or Kit" button.

To add a new product:

  1. Click the Add (+) icon.

  2. Select Add Item from the dropdown.

  3. You’ll be taken to the Item Editor, where you must enter:

    • Item ID

    • Description

    • Cost

    • Weight

image-20250326-193345.png

For full instructions, field definitions, and advanced tips on the item editor visit the Item Editor documentation.

Import Items

Clicking the Import icon will take you to the Item Import Wizard, a powerful tool for bulk creating or updating items in your store using a CSV file.

At a basic level, you can upload a simple spreadsheet containing just Item IDs and Prices—enough to create new items or update pricing. For more advanced needs, the wizard supports managing your full item catalog, including options, attributes, and other detailed configurations.

image-20250326-200116.png

For full instructions, field definitions, and advanced tips, visit the Batch Item Import documentation.

Export Items

The batch item export utility allows you to quickly generate an Excel Spreadsheet or CSV file of all the information contained with your items that can be imported through the batch item import utility. A quick way to update a lot of information is to generate a spreadsheet with this utility, edit the spreadsheet, and then import the information back into UltraCart.

image-20250326-200534.png

For full instructions, field definitions, and advanced tips, visit the Batch Item Export documentation.

Add Store Wide Option

You may have an option (such as Color) that applies to a large set of their inventory. To keep from having to define the same option repeatedly for each item, UltraCart supports the concept of store wide item options. Merchants define the option and associate it with multiple items.

image-20250326-200723.png

For full instructions, field definitions, and advanced tips, visit the Store Wide Item Options documentation.

Create a Kit

You can convert items into kits by selecting one or more items and clicking the Convert to Kit icon. After selecting these items, you’ll be taken to an interface to add one item to each kit to start with and you can add additional items to the kit by editing the kit after it is created.

image-20250326-201118.png

For full kit instructions and advanced tips, visit the Item Kits documentation.

Generate Barcodes

You can quickly generate and print barcodes for a group of items by selecting the items you’d like to generate barcodes for and hitting the generate barcodes icon.

image-20250326-202227.png

For full instructions, field definitions, and advanced tips, visit the Barcode Generator documentation.

Moving Items

At times you may have the need to move your items from one folder to another. You can move multiple items at a time.  In the items list, click the check box to the left of each item you wish to move and then click on the Move icon at the top of the page.

image-20250326-171017.png

Next the "Item Move" screen will appear.

image-20250326-171249.png

All your folders will be listed in this screen. Click the radio button to the left of the folder you want to MOVE your item(s) to (New Folder in the above example). Then click on the "Move" button. You will be returned to the Item List.

Copying Items

It's sometimes easier to copy (duplicate) an Item rather than create a new one. After copying, you can change the attributes of the item in the Item Editor.
From the items list simply select the item you wish to copy and then click the Copy icon from menu.

image-20250326-171925.png

After clicking the "copy" icon. The following screen will appear.

image-20250326-172203.png

Because you cannot have two store items with the same Item ID, you will be asked to enter the new Item ID into the box. The screen shows the original Item ID to the left. If you want to create more than one copy, separate the new Item IDs with a comma.

If you’d like to include the reviews from the original item into each copy, simply select the “Copy Reviews” option.

Click on the "copy" button when finished. Your newly created (copied) items will now be displayed in the item list.

It's suggested that you immediately go to the Item Editor and make the necessary changes to each item. Click on the Item ID (link) to be taken to the Item Editor for that specific item.

Item Search

If your store has numerous items, it can sometimes be difficult to locate them, especially if you've nested them into folders. The item search feature turns that chore into a simple task. It will search all folders at all levels regardless of what level you are presently at.

To start the search, click on the "search" icon in the Items heading.

image-20250326-172421.png

This will bring up the following Item Search screen.

image-20250326-172531.png

Item Search screen
You can search for items by Description, Item# (ID). Along with this criteria, you can specific a price with "less than" or "more than" parameters. You can specify how you want your items sorted; normal, by description, by item# or by price. Lastly, you can specify if the items are Inactive (yes or no). Once you have entered your search criteria, click on the "Start Search" button. If you want to clear the form to enter new search criteria, click on the "Clear Form" button.

Your search results will appear in a new window. You can then print the listing or return to the Item Search screen by clicking on the browser's back button.

You can also search for a specific Item or Kit ID, Cost or description in the currently displayed item table by hovering over the light blue bar at the top of the table to activate the inline search.

image-20250326-173319.png
image-20250326-173436.png

Item Tools

The Tools section offers a set of utilities to simplify and speed up store management tasks like inventory updates, bulk item imports, barcode generation, and more. These tools are designed to save time, reduce manual work, and help keep your store data accurate and organized.

image-20250326-203217.png

For full instructions, tool instructions, and advanced tips, visit the Item Tools documentation.

Deleting Items

To delete one or more items from your store, navigate to the folder the items reside in. Click the checkbox to the left of each item desired and then click the "Delete" Icon.

image-20250326-171359.png

You can also delete items one at a time by using the Delete icon next to each item in the list.

You will be presented with the following confirmation dialog.

image-20250326-171633.png

Make certain the warning dialog says "Item(s)" not "Folder". Click the "OK" button to delete the item(s) or the Cancel button to abort the process.

Note: Deleting an item does not affect orders already placed.

Editing Items

All changes to a store item are done in the Item Editor. This is the same editor that you utilized when creating new items. There are several different ways to view an items detail in the Item Editor:

  1. click on an Item ID link from the Item list or search results screen.

image-20250326-194141.png

For full instructions and advanced tips for the item editor, visit the Item Editor documentation.

Item Buy and Reviews Links

Certain links are associated with your store items and are automatically created when you create your items.

This section provides those links in the form of the Buy Button, Buy Form, Dynamic Pricing and Other (view cart and search link).

Merchants can copy and paste the links provided into the appropriate places on their web site.

UltraCart will create the HTML snippet (link) for each store item you create. The buy links are accessible from the Item List.

First locate the item list that contains the item desired. To obtain a buy link snippet click on the "[View]" link to the right of the Cost column in the row your item is on (see image below.)

image-20250326-182604.png

The following screen will appear listing the Buy Link, Buy Form, Dynamic Pricing, and Other Links.

Buy Links

When customers browse your web site (store) and find an item to purchase, they generally click on a button that will place the item into a shopping cart for checkout.
Some buy button examples are shown below.

image-20250326-182025.png

A "Buy Link" is the HTML code (snippet) that is inserted onto your web page along with the button graphic. This HTML snippet contains the code that insures the appropriate item and its attributes are placed into the shopping cart (when clicked on).

Elements of a Buy Link

Below is an example snippet of html code for a buy link.

<A HREF="http://secure.ultracart.com/cgi-bin/UCEditor?MERCHANTID=DEMO&ADD=DOGBONE">Buy Now</A>


There are three key elements within any buy link, shown above.

  • The first element is your StoreFront URL. In this example, the StoreFront URL is secure.ultracart.com. Replace this with your StoreFront url.

  • The second element is the Merchant ID. In this example, the merchant ID is DEMO. Replace the merchant ID with your merchant ID (chosen during signup).

  • The third element is the Item ID. Each store item has a unique item ID associated with it. The item ID is included in the link's target. In the example, replace DOGBONE with your products item ID.

Buy and View Cart Link

image-20250326-184516.png


You or your web designer can copy all the text within the red box and paste it into your web page. With just a little editing it can be turned into the appropriate and complete HTML code.

Note: below the Basic link for there are also Advanced Buy Links. Here you can configure additional attributes like Affiliate IDs, Coupons, Currency codes, and more.

Review Links

If you want to embed reviews on your site you can do this by using the review display script snippet or including an easy link over to the review:

image-20250326-185607.png

Inventory History Link

This feature applies only to those merchants that have the Track Inventory enabled at each item level (see page ). It basically provides an accountability method to show when, how much, and who adjusted the inventory level of a particular store item.

Adjustments to any item's inventory will be logged along with the date and time of the occurrence, adjustment amount, total (inventory count) and Reason (by whom). This activity can be viewed by merchants at the Item Level.

image-20250326-185928.png


Navigate within the Item List to locate the item you want to view. Click on the "view" link (the watch icon) under the Action column in the row of the item desired (bordered in red box above). The Inventory History screen will appear.

image-20250326-190943.png

Merchants Using Frames

UltraCart will work effectively with web sites that use frames, but there are some additional configuration requirements to ensure a consistent customer experience.
When the customer clicks the buy link on the merchant's web site their shopping cart displays inside the frame. In order for the secure checkout to take place without showing the customer a warning message, the system must stop using frames. This presents a problem because UltraCart by default returns them to the page that they clicked the buy link on once they've completed the order. This happens to be the contents of the frame instead of the parent URL of the frame.
There are two additional parameters to the buy link that determine where the UltraCart will take the user to:

  • OVERRIDECONTINUESHOPPINGURL - determines where the user will be taken to when they click the continue shopping button after viewing their shopping cart.

  • OVERRIDECATALOGURL - determines where the user goes after they view their invoice at the end of the checkout process.


Below is an example of a buy link that uses the override parameters (there should be no line break after the merchant ID in the actual html code):

<A HREF="http://secure.ultracart.com/cgi-bin/UCEditor?MERCHANTID=DEMO&OVERRIDECATALOGURL=http://www.mystore.com/widgets/&ADD=BONE">Buy</A>


Place the OVERRIDECATALOGURL and OVERRIDECATALOG parameters in the middle of the link so that only the end of the URL changes for each item.

Related Documents

Using buy links

Parameters that can be passed to UCEditor

Advanced Links - JavaScript

Related content