Who can see your coffee
A buyer reaches a lot through a catalog and through no other way. This is what each kind of catalog does, and what pausing a lot changes.
Last updated 2026-09-10
In short
- A catalog is the only way a buyer reaches a lot. Logging one shows it to nobody.
- A catalog is public, hidden, or secret, and you can change that at any time — except your default catalog, which stays public.
- Pausing a lot keeps it in the catalog and stops buyers asking you for a sample.
The catalog is the gate
LotsLog does not put your lots in front of buyers when you log them. You choose. A lot becomes reachable by being added to a catalog, and there is no other way in.
A lot can sit in several catalogs at once, or in none. A lot in no catalog is invisible: not on your profile, not in Discover, and its printed code does not open anything.
Public
A public catalog is listed on your public profile and in Discover, and anyone on the web can open it. This is the ordinary case, and the catalog LotsLog makes for you is public.
Hidden
Hiding a catalog takes it off your profile and stops its link working — for everyone, including people you already sent it to. Nothing is deleted, and one click puts it back.
Secret
A secret catalog is for one buyer. It is listed nowhere, and it opens only for someone holding both the link and a password you set. Send the link and the password in separate messages.
Changing the password is how you take access away: everyone holding the old password is locked out immediately. Making a secret catalog public again ends the secret link permanently, and making it secret later gives you a different link.
The default catalog
LotsLog makes you one catalog when you sign up, and the screen calls it your default catalog. Keep the lots you print codes for in it: it is the catalog most printed codes open through, and it is the one catalog you cannot make secret and cannot archive.
Paused is not hidden
"Active for sale" is a switch on the lot itself, not on the catalog. Turning it off removes nothing.
The lot stays in your catalog and reads "Currently unavailable" to a buyer, and nobody can ask you for a sample while the switch is off. My Lots calls the same state "Paused".
Taking a lot out of a catalog is a different act, and the last entry in this journal covers when to use which.
A secret catalog has no code to print
A lot that lives only in a secret catalog has no working QR code, and it cannot be printed on a bag. Codes resolve through public catalogs only.
Words used in this journal
- Lot — one batch of coffee you are selling, and the record of it in LotsLog.
- Logged — your record of the coffee is complete. It does not mean anyone can see it.
- Active for sale, Paused, Currently unavailable — one switch, three screens. "Active for sale" is the switch on the lot. "Paused" is what My Lots calls it when the switch is off. "Currently unavailable" is what a buyer reads in your catalog.
- Sold out — a separate switch from Active for sale, for a different fact: the coffee is gone, not just that you have paused selling it. A sold-out lot still shows to buyers, marked sold out, and stays in your catalog as proof of what you sell.
- Archived — taken out of your lists and off every public page, without being deleted. Restore brings it back.
- Catalog — the list a buyer browses. A lot reaches a buyer through a catalog and through no other way.
- Chain — the parties the coffee passed through, from the source at the bottom up to you.
- Sourcing link — a record that one of your lots came from another supplier's lot. You ask for it; they confirm it.
- Show name, Type and place only, Don't show — how much of one business a buyer sees. The same three words on every screen that asks: confirming a link, your own choice on a link, and each entry in the lot form's chain.
- Published — a roaster has put your lot on their own bag. It never means a catalog.