Keeping your lots up to date

In short

• Downloading a spreadsheet, editing it and uploading it again changes lots you already have. It never adds one and never deletes one.
• Pausing keeps a lot in your catalog; taking it out removes it from view. Neither deletes anything.
• Once a roaster has put a lot on a bag, a Standing lot can still become Limited, but never the reverse.

Editing away from the screen

Some edits are easier in Excel than one lot at a time: a price list, thirty altitudes, a season of harvest years. Download the file, change what you need, and upload the same file again.

Every row updates the lot it came from, matched on the column headed LOT ID. It is the first column in the file. Never retype it, never delete it, and never copy a whole row.

A copied row means two rows claiming one lot, and LotsLog refuses both rather than guessing which you meant. Uploading changes lots you already have — it cannot make a new one. That is what the separate "Add lots from a file" button is for, and it takes a different file.

Blank cells

On most columns an empty cell is an instruction: clear this value. That is deliberate, so you can remove a wrong altitude by deleting it.

A few columns cannot be empty — the ones a lot cannot exist without. Emptying one of those makes LotsLog refuse that row and tell you which cell it was. Nothing else in the file is affected.

The file your catalog has

A catalog page has its own spreadsheet, and it is a different file. It carries the price for each lot in that catalog and the order the lots appear in. Prices are per catalog, so they live there and not in the file from My Lots.

Pausing, and taking a lot out

Pausing a lot turns off "Active for sale". The lot stays in your catalog and reads "Currently unavailable", and nobody can ask you for a sample while the switch is off. Use it when the coffee will come back.

Taking a lot out of a catalog removes it from that catalog's grid. The lot itself is untouched, and you can add it back at any time. Use it when the coffee is finished.

Neither one deletes a lot. Nothing in LotsLog deletes a lot.

Standing and Limited

A Limited lot is one fixed batch with a total weight. A Standing lot is a coffee you restock and keep selling, with an amount available now instead of a total.

Before a roaster has put the lot on a bag you can move it either way, as often as you like. After that first bag a Standing lot can still become Limited, but a Limited lot can never become Standing — the one edit in this entry that cannot be undone.