Eventually you stop selling something. The iced latte goes out with summer; the discontinued sandwich gets replaced by a new one. The right move is to archive the old product — not delete it — so its history stays intact in your P&L.
01 Why archive a product instead of deleting it?
Archive when you stop selling something but want its history intact. Say you stopped selling the summer iced latte in October — you don't want it cluttering the product picker, but your June P&L still references it. Archiving is the answer: the product disappears from the picker yet stays available for historical reads. A hard delete would break that reference, so every past revenue entry pointing to it would lose its margin calculation. Archive cleans up the picker without nuking history.
Hard delete would break the historical reference. Every revenue entry that pointed to "summer iced latte" would lose its margin calculation. The archive pattern lets you clean up the picker without nuking the history.
02 How do I archive a product?
- 1Open Products
You'll see the full list of your active products.
- 2Click the row
Side panel opens.
- 3Scroll to the bottom
There's an "Archive product" button below the regular fields.
- 4Confirm
A two-step confirm prevents accidental archives. The product is now hidden from the picker, but history remains intact.
03 Can I undo an archive?
Yes — unarchiving is fully reversible with no data loss either way. Toggle the Show archived filter at the top of the Products list, and the archived product reappears with a small grey badge. Click it, scroll to the bottom, and click Unarchive. It's back in the picker from that moment forward, identical to never having archived it in the first place. The toggle is just a soft hide/show — nothing is ever destroyed.
Unarchiving is identical to never having archived in the first place — no data loss either way. The toggle is just a soft hide/show.
04 What happens to a product after I archive it?
After archiving, the product stops appearing in the picker on Revenue entries going forward, but everything historical stays intact. It still appears in historical P&L exports — its snapshots stay on past revenue rows — and it still shows up in Statistics for past periods on the product performance card. Archived products also free up no plan-cap slots, since products are unlimited either way. The list below covers each effect.
- Don't appear in the picker on Revenue entries going forward.
- Still appear in historical P&L exports — their snapshots stay on past revenue rows.
- Still appear in Statistics for past periods — the product performance card shows historical contribution.
- Free up no plan-cap slots — there's no cap on archived products (or on products generally — they're unlimited).
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