Hide, sell out, disable, or delete?

Overview

• MiniTill provides several different controls because temporary stock problems, channel visibility, store assortment, and permanent catalogue retirement are different situations.
• Use Sold Out for a temporary operational shortage.
• Use Store enablement/visibility when a product, category, or modifier group should not be offered at a particular location or channel.
• Use Show on POS / Show online when the item still exists but should be hidden from that selling surface.
• Delete a Product only when it is genuinely retired from the active Business catalogue. Product deletion is soft: it removes the item from active catalogues while preserving historical order records.

When to use this

• Use this guide whenever you are about to delete an item simply because it is unavailable today, not offered at one branch, or should disappear from one channel.

Step-by-step

1. If stock is temporarily gone, use Product/Modifier Availability and choose Tomorrow or No plan.
2. If only one Store should stop selling it, change that Store's menu enablement/visibility instead of changing the shared Business catalogue.
3. If the item should stay available but not appear on POS or Online Ordering, change the appropriate visibility setting.
4. If the product is permanently retired across the Business, delete the Product from the Business catalogue after checking Store/channel dependencies.
5. Before deleting a Category, reassign products that should remain organised under another active category.
6. Before deleting a Modifier Group, confirm that products using the group no longer require those choices.

Common mistakes

• Do not delete products for same-day sell-outs.
• Do not remove a Business product just because one Store does not sell it.
• Do not hide an entire Product when only one Modifier Option is out of stock.
• Do not assume deleting or removing a Modifier Option from one group has the same meaning as retiring that option everywhere; options can be shared between groups.
• Do not recreate deleted products just to preserve sales history; MiniTill keeps historical order records.

Troubleshooting

• If an item disappeared everywhere when you only meant to change one Store, review whether you changed the Business catalogue instead of Store settings.
• If a sold-out item returned automatically, check whether Tomorrow was selected.
• If a Product was deleted, historical orders should still retain their recorded sale information even though the Product is no longer active.
• If a Modifier Option changed in more than one group, check whether those groups share the same underlying option.