Learning Objectives

At the end of this lesson you will know…. 

1. How your products were initially set up in Thynk during system configuration

2. What a standard product is

3. How to create new products 

How Your Products Were Set Up Initially 

When Thynk was implemented at your property, if you are integrated with your PMS, depending on the PMS, your products may have been ‘fetched’ from the PMS by the Thynk project team, and inserted into Thynk.  For instance, if you have Mews PMS these products will be fetched.  Opera doesn't have this feature, so the Thynk Project Manager would have had to rely on a mass upload of products to get you started.  

After ‘GoLIVE’ the property or corporate admin will maintain products in Thynk. 

What are Products

Products are anything that can be sold to your customer on its own. 

Examples of products are: tea, coffee, cookies/biscuits, a standard continental breakfast, shrimp cocktail (more on that below), transportation, accommodation, meeting room rental, wine tasting, security, etc. 

Standard Products vs Combo Products

Standard products are items that can be sold on their own with individual pricing, for example, tea, coffee, cookies, security, and accommodation.  

Combo products are a collection of standard products, e.g. a morning break which will consist of standard products, coffee & tea, bread basket, fruit, Hors d’oeuvres menus.  Menus are the most common combo products.

Some examples:  

1. I f you have a Shrimp Cocktail that can be sold alone as an a la carte appetizer and also can be included in a fixed hors d'oeuvres menu with drinks and Crostini, that Shrimp Cocktail could be created as a standard product, and which can be included as a combo product in an hors d'oeuvres menu.

2. If you never sell coffee without tea, the product should be created as a ‘Standard’ product, and called ‘Coffee & Tea’ - do not build a combo product consisting of coffee, and tea. 

3. If you want to make a simple food menu, you can create it as a ‘Standard Product’ with a per person price, and then use the BEO description to show the selection, as in the screenshot below. 

Important! Only the admin can create and edit products. 

Creating a Standard Product

Follow these steps to create a standard product: 

1. In Thynk at your Home Screen, go to the Products tab, change the view from ‘Recently Viewed’ to ‘All’ Products.

2. Check that this new product you are adding doesn’t already exist.  If it doesn’t, click on the New button. Then, click on Product.

3.  In the ‘New Product’ window, enter the name of the product into the Product Name field.

4. Select the Property  this product is for, from the drop down list. 

5. In the Product Type (required) field, select one from the drop down list.

6. In the Unit Type field, you can define the unit type (hours or dozen). This is not a mandatory field, but you can use it if you are charging for a meeting room for 4 hours, for example. Another example may be that you are charging for cookies by the dozen. So you would set this up as: Pricing Type = Per Unit, and Unit Type = Dozen.

7. In the Pricing section, in the field Pricing Type select if this product will be charged based on the total number of guests, or per quantity needed of the  product. For example, if you have an event for 100 people, you only need to charge for 1 projector. FYI, this can always be modified on the booking itself if the sales team needs to adjust it for the customer.

8. The Unit Cost is the cost to the property and is only required if you want to calculate profit margin.

9. Price inclusive of tax, and Price Exclusive of tax  (these depend on whether your property quotes prices inclusive or exclusive of taxes), VAT Category (this is determined by your Director/Admin/Finance department), Accounting Category (mandatory field).

10. The Invoice on Consumption check box means this is an item that will be invoiced based on how many were used upon consumption of the event.

11. Scroll down to the next section called Product Info, and complete the Start Time and End Time of the product, and the Product Type, which is also a mandatory field. Select from the list.  

12. The ‘No order’ check box is for Mews interfaced properties, and if you check this checkbox, this product will not be sent to Mews.  Orders are attached to reservations and billed in the PMS. 

13. Scroll down to the Descriptions section, where you enter the description of the product. And Save. 

14. Now you will be returned to the product that you have created and you can edit any fields you wish here.

15. If you are using multiple languages then you can enter the product’s name in the local language in Name Language 2 and Name Language 3 fields as needed. If you need these language fields to show on documents and don’t know how to edit those, please contact Thynk Support. 

16. You can edit the Product Details section, and the Pricing section. 

17. In the PMS section, complete what’s needed for your PMS. The No Order checkbox only applies to Mews Properties, and you select if the product pricing is not to go to Mews. 

18. In the Descriptions section, you can edit the descriptions as needed to print on documents. The first Description field is in the main language. Followed by other languages as needed. 

19. The Description FS or Description BEO is the description that will be displayed in the function sheet/BEOs, so you want to make sure this description reads well. Finally, click on Save.

Best Practices for Creating Products

• Only the Thynk Admin can create and edit products.  The admin should get the necessary pricing and description information from their Catering or F&B Director. 

• If products in different accounting/tax categories need to be bundled (i.e. food vs beverage, or food vs equipment), then these should be created as ‘combo’ products.  Refer to the Knowledge Base article link below the lesson on how to create combo products.

Resources

1. How to create a combo product - Knowledge base article