Products & team settings

Products

Keep a catalogue of the things you sell — with variants, options, images and per-product tax settings — and invoice lines become a two-click pick instead of retyping. Products feed offers and invoices alike.

Choose Simple for a short product form or Advanced for the guided flow. Click anywhere on the mode card to start. Cancel in the simple form or the first wizard step, and Change mode, return to mode selection. The wizard saves your product as a draft as you go, so once it has, leaving asks what to do with it: Delete draft, or Keep as draft to finish it later from Products.

Advanced adds a description, options and variants (each with its own price, stock and shipping details), a compare-at price, photos, tags, and how the product appears in search results. A product without options has its price, cost, stock and shipping details in both modes, and you can switch a product between the two at any time.

Switching a product with options to Simple shows empty price, stock and shipping fields, just like a product without options. Save it that way and those details replace all its options and variants with a single one — you're asked first, because the variants can't be brought back. Invoices that sold one of them still show what they sold.

Walking through New product leaves the product as a draft while you're still filling it in, and publishes it as active the moment you finish — so a product you complete is immediately usable on an invoice, and one you abandon halfway never ends up on offer.

The product list shows title, price, VAT rate, purchase price and VAT treatment. A product that offers a choice has no single price, so the list shows the lowest of its variants — the "from" figure. A price you haven't filled in yet shows a dash rather than €0,00, because free and unpriced are not the same thing.

Every product has a VAT treatment. After its type, choose what the product is for your books, then its VAT rate:

Standard — charged at its VAT rate.
Margin scheme — used goods. No VAT on the invoice; you pay VAT on your margin. Record a purchase price, or the whole price counts as margin.
Shipping charge — what you charge to send goods, like "Standard shipping". It's taxed like the goods it ships: at their VAT rate, under the margin scheme when they're all used goods. It isn't offered when you record a shipment and never asks for a purchase price. The shipping rates from your Shopify shop are marked for you.
Deposit — money you refund when the old part comes back. It isn't taxed, so the invoice says Not taxed instead of a rate, and so does its refund.
Gift card — taxed when it's spent, not when you sell it, so it's Not taxed on the invoice too.

A service is always Standard; the other four are for goods. A deposit or gift card is always 0%, so the rate is set for you. The info icon next to the field explains the option you chose.

Selling takes stock off the shelf

Issuing an invoice takes its stock off the shelf, and a draft order reserves what it will need first — so two orders can't both promise the last one. The reservation is released when you issue the invoice (the stock actually moves then) or if you cancel it.

A sent offer or proforma holds the stock it quotes too, until the date it's valid until — so what you've offered isn't sold in your shop in the meantime. It lets go when the customer declines, when it runs out unanswered, or when it becomes an invoice, which then takes the stock. Once the customer approves, it keeps holding until you generate the invoice or proforma. An offer never takes stock off the shelf itself.

Two draft orders wanting more than you have will both say so, in amber, while they're still drafts. Only one of them can be filled, and Voltane tells you that early rather than at the moment you press send. It won't stop you issuing the first one, though — if the stock is on the shelf, the order that goes out first gets it, and the other is measured against whatever is left.

Keeping track of stock

Every product page shows what you have: on hand, available and committed. Available is simply on hand minus what other orders have already spoken for.

Products with options show a Stock column in the variant list, so you can read the whole grid at a glance instead of opening each one.

Variants are listed alphabetically — here, and wherever you pick one on an invoice, a purchase or a subscription.

Change the on-hand number and Voltane records the correction rather than quietly overwriting the figure. That matters, because the number is worked out from everything that has moved — every sale, every correction — so a change you type is kept as its own entry with the rest.

That list is the stock history, newest first. Each line says what moved, by how much, and what the stock stood at afterwards. Sales link straight to the invoice that caused them, so "why is there one fewer of these" is a click away. Corrections show the note instead, since there's no document behind them.

Underneath the committed figure you'll see which orders are holding the stock, each linking to the order itself. A product reading nine on hand and nothing available now tells you where those nine went.

Pulling a product back from your shop

If a product came from a connected shop, its page has a Re-sync from Shopify button. It fetches the current title, description, images, options and variants and writes them over what's here. Useful when you've changed the options grid in the shop and want Voltane to match it.

It runs in the background, so give it a moment and refresh. The button only appears on products that actually came from a shop, and only while that shop's connection is active. With more than one shop connected, it asks the shop the product came from; if that isn't known, the button stays away rather than guessing.

Team settings worth knowing

All under your team's settings pages:

Company & branding — your logo and the details on your PDFs.
Invoice defaults — numbering format, yearly reset, default payment term, bank details. You can also plan a numbering change ahead of time: pick a date, write the new format, and documents issued from that date carry it. Nothing to remember on the day, and a document dated back into an earlier period is still numbered the way that period was. Changes that have already started are shown but can't be edited — documents are out there carrying the numbers they produced.
Document language — off by default, meaning everything you issue is written in your own language. Switch it on to write to each customer in theirs (where we have translations for it). The language is recorded on each document when it's created, follows a new customer while it's a draft, and doesn't change once it's issued. The emails you send a document with are written in that document's language.
VAT behaviour — small-business scheme (KOR), OSS mode for EU B2C sales, automatic exit when you outgrow an exemption. With automatic exit on, the invoice that takes you over the €20,000 KOR limit already charges VAT, and the scheme switches off. With it off, we warn you and leave the setting to you. If your turnover last year was over the limit and the KOR is still on, we warn you too: you can't use it this year.
Convert approved offers automatically — an approved offer becomes a sent invoice without you touching it (on by default).
Members & roles — invite colleagues as admins or editors. Editors can view, create and edit, but not delete. They can see your integrations and check whether a connection still works, but only an admin can connect or change one.

Notifications

Everything the robots do lands in your in-app notification centre — and in your inbox where it matters. Every notification links straight to the customer or document it's about.

Two kinds of email, and they look different on purpose. Mail we send you — a shop order became an invoice, a connection needs reconnecting, your shop is charging the wrong VAT — comes from Voltane and is signed by us. Mail your customers receive — invoices, reminders, payment confirmations — carries your name and your logo, and replies come back to you, not to us. Your customer has never heard of Voltane, so they never see us in the sender.

The address it is sent from is ours. That is not a limitation we chose: mail claiming to be from your domain but sent from ours gets filed as spam.

Product photos in simple mode

A product's photos are on its page in both simple and advanced mode. Add, reorder or remove them in either — you never have to switch modes for a picture.

A photo while you create a product

The product wizard now has a photo step, just before the review. It's optional — plenty of products are labour or one-off charges with nothing to photograph — but if you have the picture to hand, this is the moment.

Options while you create a product

In the advanced wizard, add an option like size or colour and the variants are made for you — each one already carrying the price, cost, VAT and stock settings you entered in the earlier steps, including whether you keep selling when it's out of stock. What belongs to one variant only isn't copied: its SKU, its barcode and how many you have. New variants start at zero, so count each one in.

Once your product has options, the price, cost and stock steps show what was copied but no longer change it — adjust a variant's price or stock in the Variants step instead. The review lists every option and variant, so you can check them all before you create the product.

Changing a product's status when it's in a shop

If a product is listed in one or more shops, changing its status here asks what you want to happen there — and tells you exactly what it would affect: "this will change 2 shops".

Each shop keeps its own status, so you can retire something from one shop and keep selling it in another. If you've set a shop's status by hand, we say so by name and leave it alone unless you choose Apply everywhere.

More than one product photo

Products can hold as many photos as you like, dragged into the order you want. They always could — the editor was only ever showing you one slot, which we've now removed.

If the product is linked to a shop, your photos are sent there and kept in step: add one here and it appears there, remove one here and the copy we sent is taken down. Photos that were already in your shop are left alone — we only ever manage the ones we put there ourselves.

Drag photos straight in

Drag a photo from your computer onto a product's photos and it's uploaded and added — no need to open the picker first. Drop several at once and they all go in. It works wherever you add a picture: the product page, the wizard's photo step, a variant, your logo and profile photos. Where only one image fits — a variant, a logo, a profile photo — the one you drop replaces what was there.

Anything that isn't an image is skipped, and we tell you so; the photos you dropped along with it still go through.

Merging two products

Two rows for the same article happen: you typed one in, and the same thing came over from your shop under its full name. Open the one you want to get rid of and press Merge into another product.

Search for the product you want to keep — by name or SKU; the one you're on isn't offered — then press Show what moves. You'll get a list before anything changes:

which variant lands on which, by name
how many invoice and offer lines, purchase order lines, stock movements, reservations, photos, tags and shop listings move across

Read it, then press Merge. Only then does anything happen.

Keep the one that's linked to your shop. Merge the hand-typed product into the shop one, not the other way round — that way the survivor keeps its shop link and stays in sync. If the one you're keeping has no shop link and the other does, Voltane hands the link over rather than losing it.

This can't be undone. The merged product is removed and its whole history is repointed at the survivor. Nothing is deleted — every invoice, purchase and stock movement is still there, now hanging off the product you kept — but there is no button to split them apart again. That's why the preview isn't optional: the Merge button doesn't appear until you've looked at one.

A few details worth knowing:

If the product you're keeping already has variants, the ones from the other product hand their history over and stop being sellable. Their sales history stays intact on the variant that received it.
Check which variant each one lands on. Voltane matches on the shop's own ID, then SKU, then name. When none of those match it picks the first variant and marks it no match — check this — pick the right one from the dropdown before you continue. On a product with a lot of variants that first guess is arbitrary, and the sales history goes wherever you leave it pointing.
If the product you're keeping has no variants at all, the other product's variants move across as they are, keeping their prices and stock.
Options belonging to the removed product are dropped, so you don't end up with two lists of the same choice.

Restoring a merged product

You can't. The merged product's invoices, purchases and stock history now belong to the one you kept, so bringing it back would only give you an empty duplicate. Voltane refuses and tells you which product holds the history instead.

Deleting a product the ordinary way is still undoable — this only applies to merges.

Accountant access and import VAT

Invite your accountant with the Accountant role for financial review and exports. They can open source documents without changing or issuing invoices or marking VAT periods filed. Available areas still depend on your team's enabled features.

If your business holds an Article 23 import permit, enter its effective date in invoice settings after checking the permit. Leave it blank otherwise. Non-EU goods use import VAT through the return only from that date; services follow separate rules. Customs or forwarder evidence is still needed for actual import VAT and its deduction.

Dutch KOR does not exempt distance sales taxable abroad. Where VAT returns are enabled, record an officially approved EU-KOR exemption separately for each country. Go to Settings → Invoice settings → Your finance setup, answer yes to selling to consumers in other EU countries, and choose Add EU-KOR registration below the OSS settings. Your registrations are listed there too, and an ended one is marked as such. Enter its EX number, dates, national turnover limit and approval evidence. Copy from the approval how many previous years count, each year's limit, the threshold at which the exemption stops, and any excluded supplies, then confirm you checked them. The registration saves straight away; you don't need to save the invoice settings. Confirm these national rules before marking an EU-KOR period filed. Classify special supplies on invoice lines so turnover follows the right rule. For amounts in another currency, the report shows the first published ECB rate of the year, its date and its source, alongside figures needing review. A later credit does not automatically restore an exemption that ended after a threshold crossing.

Adding a purchase invoice

In Spend, click Add purchase invoice and pick the supplier's PDF. Voltane reads it and opens the invoice straight away, with the document beside it: number, dates, amounts and lines are filled in from what was read. You check and finish it in the same screen you later edit it in. Picked several files at once? They wait under New, where Make purchase invoice opens each one the same way.

Opened one by mistake? Delete it from the invoice's menu. The document goes back to New. Once a purchase invoice is approved, exported or in a VAT period you've filed, it stays: it's part of your books by then. Correct it, or ask the supplier for a credit note.

A supplier you don't have yet. When the document names a party that isn't in your records, the supplier field offers a choice: pick an existing supplier, or add the one from the document. Open that option to check what was read — name, VAT number, IBAN and address — before you add them. Every field lets you type, or pick any text from the document: the values Voltane recognised come first, the rest of the document follows. Check the VAT number: some invoices print yours above the supplier's, and yours is marked as your own.

A supplier Voltane already knows. For many well-known suppliers, the name and address are already filled in when you add them. Their first invoice is also read the way their invoices usually read, so fewer fields need correcting. You still check everything beside the document before you add them. The IBAN always comes from the document in front of you.

Where the supplier is decides the VAT. If Voltane doesn't know a supplier's country, the invoice counts as domestic and says so. Click Add their address to fill it in right there, next to the document.

When the invoice reached you. Next to the invoice date is Received on: the day the invoice actually came in. That isn't always the date printed on it, and you can only deduct the VAT once you have the invoice. Voltane fills in the day the document arrived, the day you uploaded it or the date of the email, and says so underneath. Click That's right to confirm it, or change the date. If Voltane doesn't know, the field stays empty until you fill it in. You can still set it after the invoice is paid or exported. If the invoice date wasn't read from the document, that's said under the date too.

Another invoice with the same number. If you already have an invoice with this number from the same supplier, the new one is still created, with a note that links to the other one. Check that it isn't the same invoice before you pay it, or correct the number if it was misread.

A foreign supplier that charges Dutch VAT. Some suppliers abroad charge 21% Dutch VAT when they shouldn't, often because your account has no VAT number. You can't reclaim that VAT. Put the VAT amount on a line of its own and tick Supplier VAT, not deductible: it counts in the invoice total, but stays out of your VAT return. Add your VAT number to your account with that supplier so future invoices come without it.

Not all VAT deductible? Under the category, Deductible VAT sets how much of an invoice's VAT you may reclaim: for example 50% for a car you also drive privately, or nothing for gifts. Below 100% you choose why. A category can set a default for every invoice in it. Your VAT return then reclaims only that share and shows what it left out.

Totals in your own currency. The total under the invoice list and the figures on the Spend overview are in your own currency. An invoice in another currency counts at the exchange rate you entered on it. One without a rate isn't added: the total says how many it left out, so you can add the rate.

Not a new cost? Under New you can also link a document to an invoice you already have — a receipt, a payment confirmation or a second copy — or set it aside if it isn't about money at all.

Spend exports and advertising costs

In Spend → Export, create a template and choose the records and file format your accountant needs. The Accounting journal and audit file option produces an XAF 4.0 file for the selected period. It hands over entries from sales and purchase documents, payments and provider costs. Ask your accountant to review account allocation, supplier VAT and supporting documents before posting it. The file has no opening balances and does not include a complete bank ledger, so it is not a full set of accounts. Choose Accountant package to hand over everything in one ZIP: the same audit file, a VAT reconciliation that puts your VAT return next to the bookings and shows any difference, and the original of every sale and purchase in the period.

When importing advertising costs, choose the currency of the source amounts before reviewing the preview. If the original currency is absent from imported data, check the original statement or import the source again; a converted total is not enough to establish the source currency.

Advertising imports accept a source export in your administration’s base currency. If the file uses another currency, obtain a base-currency source export first; Voltane does not guess a conversion for these cost reports.