19. Product Editing
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19. Product Editing
Verified against: the full field inventory already established in
[Section 3]/03-product-management/ and [Section 4]/04-product-variants/, plus
product-general-section.tsx (delete action — source-read directly).
Safe vs. sensitive changes
Using the real fields confirmed in Sections 3–4:
Safe changes
(low blast radius — won’t affect pricing, stock accuracy, tax documents, or whether the product can be legally/correctly sold)
- Description, Subtitle
- Images (gallery, thumbnail, variant image tagging — [Section 3]/03-product-management/#images)
- Marketing-only metadata (e.g.
bullets, if used) - Handle/URL slug — IMPORTANT caveat below
WARNING — “safe” still needs a check: changing the Handle (URL slug) breaks any existing external link/bookmark to that product page, and there’s no automatic redirect in this system. Treat it as safe for a brand-new unpublished product, not for something already live and linked to.
Sensitive changes
(real consequences elsewhere in the system — verify before changing)
| Field | Why it’s sensitive |
|---|---|
| SKU | Inventory is tracked by SKU ([Section 5]/05-inventory-management/) — changing it doesn’t relabel historical stock movements or past order line items, it just starts tracking under a new identifier |
| Price | Takes effect immediately for new orders; does not retroactively change already-placed orders or already-issued invoices ([Section 16]/16-invoicing/ — invoices are a frozen snapshot). A known caching bug can also make the storefront’s listing page show a stale price briefly after a change ([Section 14]/14-payments/#known-accepted-gaps-not-silently-missing—documented-on-purpose) |
| Inventory (Stock Quantity) | Same single-field, no-reason-captured mechanism as [Section 5]/05-inventory-management/#stock-adjustment — a wrong edit here is invisible after the fact |
HSN code / GST rate (product.metadata) | Feeds GST invoice generation directly ([Section 16]/16-invoicing/) — a missing/wrong HSN code makes invoice generation fail loud for any order containing that product |
| Product Status | Controls storefront visibility ([Section 3]/03-product-management/#status—publishing) — moving a live product back to Draft removes it from the storefront immediately |
What should be audited when important information changes
WARNING — there is no audit trail for product edits. This was already established while researching [Section 6]/06-stock-audit/#what-the-original-brief-wants-vs-what-exists: the product detail page has no Activity/notes section (unlike Orders — see the same section for that contrast). Nobody can see, from within this admin, who changed a price or SKU, or what it used to be.
Until a real audit feature exists, treat the following as a manual process discipline, not something the system will do for you:
- REQUIRED (process, not system-enforced): before changing Price, SKU, Inventory, or HSN/GST metadata on a live product, note the old value, the new value, who made the change, and why — somewhere outside this admin.
- This matters most for Price and HSN/GST metadata, since both feed directly into GST invoicing ([Section 16]/16-invoicing/) and a wrong value there has real tax-document consequences, not just a display glitch.
Deleting vs. editing
Products can also be permanently deleted — covered fully in [Section 20 — Product Deactivation]/20-product-deactivation/, since that’s a different decision from an edit (and, unlike everything above, cannot be undone at all).
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