Product catalog for a WhatsApp AI agent

Your agent does not know what anything costs until you tell it. The catalog is where you tell it: a product, a price, its sizes, its photo. That is where it takes the numbers from when the customer asks “how much is it?”. This guide is the full walkthrough from the screen, click by click. The examples use a made-up clothing store, Moda Sol, and its star product: the Polo oversize de algodón pima (an oversized pima cotton T-shirt). The dashboard is in Spanish, so buttons and on-screen messages are quoted here exactly as you will see them, with the English meaning in parentheses.

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What the catalog is for

The screen itself sums it up under the title: «El precio sale de aquí» (The price comes from here). (If you have more than one funnel, that sentence starts by saying which funnel you are looking at: «Lo que vende «…», más los productos sin embudo asignado», What «…» sells, plus the products with no funnel assigned. The list is trimmed to that funnel.) That is literal: the agent carries a written instruction to check the catalog every time the customer asks about a product or its price, and not to make prices up. The practical consequence is simple: if a product is not in the catalog, your agent has nowhere to get its exact price from.

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The words on this screen

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Your first product, click by click

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How to read the table

Each cell in the table tells you something about the product. These are the ones that raise the most questions: The dimmed rows, with lighter text, are products with Activo switched off.

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The three types, and how they really differ

The type is not a label: it changes which fields you see and what the agent does afterwards. Each card tells you so when you choose it. The stock-tracking notice changes too: on a physical product it talks about stock on hand, on a service about cupos disponibles (available slots) («El agente no ofrece lo que se agotó.», The agent does not offer what has run out.) and on an info product about limited licenses or accesses. So “stock” here is not just boxes in a warehouse.

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If you sell a course or an ebook: automatic delivery

On an info product a block appears that is not in the other two, and it explains on its own what it is for: «Cuando el pago se confirma (voucher aprobado), el agente le manda esto al cliente sin que tú hagas nada.» (When payment is confirmed (voucher approved), the agent sends this to the customer without you doing anything.) You have two options:

• A file from the Librería (Library) — only the files already marked as sendable for the funnel you have open are offered. If there are none, the panel tells you: «Sube un archivo a la Librería y márcalo como enviable para poder entregarlo aquí.» (Upload a file to the Library and mark it as sendable to be able to deliver it here.) They are prepared in The file Library.
• A link — it has to start with http:// or https://. If not, on saving you get «El enlace debe empezar con http:// o https://» (The link must start with http:// or https://).

If you save with neither of the two, the product is saved anyway, but the panel warns you: «Ojo: sin archivo ni enlace, el agente no podrá entregarlo solo.» (Careful: with no file and no link, the agent will not be able to deliver it on its own.) And in the list, that product is marked under its name as «Infoproducto · ⚠️ sin entrega». It is worth fixing: otherwise the agent can charge for something it then does not know how to deliver.

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The form, block by block

Once the type is chosen, the panel shows seven blocks. Six are the same for all three types; the seventh depends on the type and sits between Inventario and Disponibilidad.

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What is really required

Not much. Three things, in this order:

1. The type. Without it no other field is shown.
2. Nombre *. If it is missing: «El nombre es obligatorio.» (The name is required.)
3. Precio *. If it is empty or not a number: «Pon un precio válido.»

Everything else — description, photos, SKU, variants, stock, funnels — is optional and can be filled in later.

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Quantity pricing (wholesale)

It is the most powerful feature on this screen and the least obvious. Turn on Precios por cantidad and you declare the exact total price for each quantity, not a percentage discount: Rows are added with + Añadir tramo (+ Add tier). And with + De N a más (precio por unidad) (+ From N up (price per unit)) you define the open tier: from 6 up, S/ 65 each. Each tier has to cost more than the previous one: if the 3-unit tier costs less than the 2-unit one, the panel will not let you save and tells you which one to fix. For quantities that are not on your scale, the agent combines tiers and adds them up. If the customer asks for 10 T-shirts and your scale goes up to 3, it charges 3 + 3 + 3 + 1. If you prefer a clean per-unit price from a certain quantity onwards, define the open De N a más tier. The agent does not do the arithmetic: when it looks up the product with the quantity the customer asked for, it receives the total already calculated. There is also Promoción con fecha de fin (Promotion with an end date): a separate scale, with its own tiers and the Vigente hasta (Valid until) field. While it is in force, the promotion overrides the list scale in the conversation.

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Variants: sizes and colors

Moda Sol sells the same T-shirt in 3 colors and 4 sizes. That is 12 variants, and there is no need to type them one by one.

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Stock: when to turn it on

Turn on «Controlar stock» only if you are going to record the movements. If you turn it on and never load any stock, the agent will believe you have none left. With Controlar stock off (the table reads Sin control) there is nothing that can run out: it is the right option for a service you can provide with no cap on slots, or for a product you make to order. Quantities are loaded in another app: Inventario. From the catalog you only declare whether the product is tracked. The first load is done in Inventario with Registrar movimiento (Record movement) → Carga inicial (+) (Initial load (+)); after that, every purchase, return or adjustment is also recorded there.

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Visible and Active are not the same

This is the costliest confusion on the screen. Both switches are in Disponibilidad and only one of them silences the agent.

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Funnels that sell it

That list, Embudos que lo venden (Funnels that sell it), only appears if your business has more than one funnel. If you have one, you will not even see it. And the rule is not the one it looks like: «Sin marcar ninguno, lo cotizan todos los embudos.» (With none ticked, every funnel quotes it.) — ticking nothing means “all”, not “none”. As soon as you tick one, the text changes: «Solo los embudos marcados podrán cotizarlo.» (Only the ticked funnels will be able to quote it.) Funnels are saved in a second step, after the product. If that step fails, you will see an error message and the panel will stay open, even though the product has already been saved. If it was a new product, do not click Guardar again: you would create an identical one. Close the panel, reload the page, open it with Editar (Edit) and tick the funnels again. And if on saving you take the product away from the funnel you have open, it warns you — «Ya no lo vende el embudo abierto: sale de esta lista.» (The open funnel no longer sells it: it leaves this list.) — and it disappears from the table. It has not been deleted: it stopped belonging to that funnel. Two things other screens do with your products, so they do not take you by surprise (see Your funnels):

• If you duplicate a funnel, the copy is born selling the same products the original had ticked.
• If you accept a funnel that another account shared with you, its products arrive in your catalog as new products, ticked only for that funnel and without stock tracking.

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Editing many products at once: the CSV template

To load a hundred products, or to raise the price of a whole season, the one-by-one form is no use. The Plantilla CSV button (next to «Añadir producto») opens the «Editar catálogo en bloque (CSV)» (Bulk-edit catalog (CSV)) box, with two numbered steps.

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The rules of the file

• A row with an id updates the product that already exists.
• A row without an id creates a new product. Careful: if you delete the id from a template row, the original is not updated: an identical one is born, because the handle the template comes with is not the one the product has stored. To change a product that already exists, always keep its id.
• And the other way round: if you type by hand a handle equal to the one the system stores for an existing product, that row without an id updates it. For a product created in the dashboard, that handle is its name in lowercase with hyphens (polo-oversize-de-algodon-pima), not the one the template comes with.
• A product that is not in the file is not touched. Deleting a product row does not delete the product.
• Removing a variant’s row deletes that variant from the product.
• But removing all the variant rows of a product that has several does not delete anything: that row is rejected with an error warning that the product «tiene N variantes y esta fila no las trae» (has N variants and this row does not include them), and the product is left intact. The same happens if none of its variant rows carries its variant_id.
• With variant rows, the price goes in variant_price, not in price. If you write a price in the product row, that product is skipped with the warning «el precio de la fila maestra no se aplica cuando hay filas de variante» (the master row’s price is not applied when there are variant rows).
• For clothing, one row per combination, with variant_title («Negro / M») and variant_options («Color:Negro; Talla:M»).

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How your catalog reaches the customer

There are two different routes, and it is worth not mixing them up.

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1. In the conversation (the important one)

When the customer asks about a product or its price, the agent searches the catalog and answers with what it finds. It searches by the product name and by the name or the code (SKU) of its variants. Useful things to know:

• It does not search inside the description, although it does show it to the agent (trimmed) once it has found the product.
• It has to match at least half the words. And one- or two-letter words — «S», «M», «XL» — have to stand on their own to count.
• It returns at most 5 products. If you have forty similar items, the agent will name a few, not the whole list.
• The variant’s color and size help to narrow down among what it already found, not to find something that did not match by name or by code.
• When the agent looks up a product with the quantity the customer asked for, it receives the total already calculated, with the scale and the promotion if there are any.

Translated into a recommendation: the product name has to be the name your customer would ask for it by.

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2. In the native WhatsApp catalog

It is the products tab WhatsApp shows inside your business profile. It fills itself, but with conditions:

• Your number has to be a WhatsApp Business account and be connected. If it is not, nothing is published there (and the agent carries on selling over chat all the same).
• One entry is published per variant, not per product. That is why the 12-combination T-shirt appears 12 times, each with the product’s main photo.
• Only the products that are both «Activo» and «Visible en el catálogo» get in, and only if they have a price and a currency.
• With quantity pricing, the 1-unit list price is published, not the promotion.
• If you ticked funnels on the product, each number publishes its own. A product with no funnels ticked — which is the normal case — is published by all your numbers.

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If the playbook says a different price

Your agent takes prices from the catalog, but also from the text of its sales playbook and from the files in the Library it reads to know how to answer (a price list in PDF, for example). If the playbook says “the Polo oversize de algodón pima costs S/ 89” and the catalog has S/ 79, the agent can contradict itself in front of the customer. That is what the playbook’s Doctor is for: when a line of the playbook puts a price near the full name of a catalog product (or its SKU) and it does not match, it warns you. If there is only one possible price, it offers to fix it in one click with the Poner S/ 79 (precio del catálogo) (Set S/ 79 (catalog price)) button; if the product has several variants, it shows you their prices and you decide. Products with quantity pricing are not compared. See The Doctor.

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Things you are going to need later

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If something does not work

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The same thing, from your assistant

Your assistant can read the whole catalog, load it in bulk from a file you hand it, and correct it. With the link the dashboard gives you (Personalizar → Asistentes IA → Copiar link, Customize → AI assistants → Copy link, the same one as in the connection guides), your assistant can already read and write the catalog, and also delete products. If you connected with the base address, with nothing after it, it can only read the catalog: to write, you need to add catalog_write. See The connection URL. And, as in the dashboard, your user has to have access to the Ventas app. The rule that avoids disasters: when writing, each product is a complete row that replaces the one that was there — whatever is not sent may be left empty. That is why the right order is to read the record, change only your part, send it back whole and read it again to check. The system helps quite a bit: it rejects incomplete rows before touching anything. And three limits worth keeping in mind:

• Photos are not touched from the assistant: uploading a batch does not delete or change your products’ images. They are managed in the dashboard.
• Nor is the stock quantity. Even if your assistant sends a number, it is not written: it lives in Inventario. What it can declare from outside is whether the product is stock-tracked.
• The price scale stays as it is if the assistant does not mention it, and is deleted if you ask it to remove it.

Phrases that work:

• “List my catalog before writing anything, so as not to duplicate.”
• “Raise the price of the Polo oversize de algodón pima to 89 soles. Read its record first and send the whole row back with that single change.”
• “Set the Combo Verano to inactive: read its record, change only that and send the complete row back.”
• “Open three of the ones you just uploaded and show me the price and currency of each variant.”