VanDev Catalog Workbench

Description

Catalog Workbench is one unified interface for your whole WooCommerce catalogue. Products, variations, categories, brands, tags, attributes, sale campaigns and the filters on your shop pages all sit in a single workspace under one menu, instead of being spread across a dozen separate admin screens.

Edit, price and organise everything from that one screen. You’re working on your real WooCommerce products, not a copy of them, so there’s nothing to sync and nothing to import before you start.

Documentation: https://shopmasterplugins.com/documentation/

Catalog Workbench Pro: https://shopmasterplugins.com

✅ FREE VERSION FEATURES

Everything in this section is in the free plugin and stays free. No limit on how many products you can have, no limit on how many you can change at once, and nothing that expires.

The screens: Product Editor, Sale Manager, Categories, Brands, Tags, Attribute Editor, Filter Editor, Filter Widgets, Batch Utilities for pricing and stock, Import, Export and Settings.

The Product Editor

Catalogue work goes faster when every product is already open in front of you.

• Edit straight in the grid — prices, stock, SKUs, categories, images and more, typed into each row.
• Save it all at once — your changes wait, highlighted, until you save them together. Edits made on page one survive a trip to page three.
• 48 columns, your layout — show, hide and drag columns, then save the arrangement as a preset. SKU and product name stay put while the rest scrolls sideways.
• Quick actions on every row — duplicate, draft, publish or bin a product, or shift-click a run of rows and change them together.
• Safe saving — duplicate SKUs are caught, and leaving with unsaved edits asks you first.

Finding The Products You Want

• Combine any filters — category, stock status, product type, brand and tag, stacked together.
• Filter from a column — twelve columns carry a funnel that filters by their own values.
• Your whole store, not just this page — search and filters cover the full catalogue.
• Save a filter set and load it again in one click.

Variations

• Every variation in one table, across 27 columns, edited the same way as products.
• Bulk Edit Variations — prices, sale windows, stock, shipping and downloads across the ones you tick.
• Generate Variations builds every combination from the product’s attributes and leaves the ones you already have alone.
• Convert a simple product to variable from its row, with a guided setup for attributes, price and stock.

Bulk Price And Stock Changes

Batch Utilities opens over the grid with your ticked products listed. Apply a change to that selection or to every product in the store, and choose whether it reaches parent products, their variations, or both.

The free version covers pricing and stock:

• Raise or lower prices by a fixed amount or a percentage, set one price across a range, or clear prices entirely.
• Sale prices by amount or percentage, with the dates the sale starts and ends.
• Round prices to end in 9 or 99 — set the rules once and every price follows them.
• Stock — set quantities and switch stock status.
• Long runs finish — the work goes through in passes with progress as it goes, instead of timing out on your server.

The other Batch Utilities tabs — shipping and tax, attributes, taxonomy, custom fields, content, images, status, delete, logic and undo — are Pro, and are listed further down.

Sale Campaigns

Plan a campaign once. Prices drop when it starts and go back when it ends.

• Schedule ahead — pick the start and end dates and the campaign switches on by itself.
• Percentage or amount off, with a special price on a single product where one needs different terms.
• Every sale at a glance — Draft, Scheduled, Active or Ended, with a live countdown.
• No two sales collide — a product belongs to one campaign at a time, so campaigns can’t overwrite each other’s prices.

Categories, Brands And Tags

• Cards or a full tree, with product and subcategory counts at every level.
• Edit as you browse — names, parents, slugs, images and descriptions.
• Bulk Create builds a whole nested set of categories, or a long list of brands or tags, in one window.
• Brand logos, and a product can carry more than one brand.
• View Products opens the grid filtered to that category, brand or tag.

Attributes And Colour Swatches

• Every attribute and all of its values in one table — add, rename, delete, then save in one action.
• Colour swatches — set an attribute to swatches, give its values their colours, and they show on your shop and product pages.
• Add attributes from a product’s row, choosing its values, whether they show on the product page and whether they drive variations.
• Bulk Create for a long list of values, or of attributes.

Filters For Your Shop Pages

• Five kinds of filter — attribute, category, brand, tag and price range.
• Lists, dropdowns, colour swatches or a price slider.
• No dead ends — options with no matching products are hidden as shoppers choose.
• Sizes in size order — Smart Sort arranges options by what they measure, so Small, Medium and Large come out in that order.
• Group filters into a widget and place it with a shortcode in any sidebar, page or template.

Import And Export

• CSV, JSON or XML, in both directions.
• Export what your filters found — pick the products, then the fields, then the format.
• WooCommerce’s own column names in the CSV, so WooCommerce’s importer reads the file straight back.
• Map your columns and save the mapping as a template. Existing products are matched by SKU and updated, or skipped if you prefer.
• Dry run first, then watch the log as the import runs in batches.
• Roll an import back for 30 days — new products are removed and updated ones go back as they were.

Quick Find And Settings

• Quick Find — hold a key, or a spare mouse button, and your favourite columns, filter sets and tools appear under the cursor in eight slots.
• Settings — page sizes, where editors open, currency and separators, swatches, taxes and coupons, dark mode, and whether uninstalling clears the plugin’s own data. Your products, categories, brands, tags and images are never touched either way.

⭐ PRO VERSION FEATURES

Catalog Workbench Pro adds the following: https://shopmasterplugins.com

• ⭐ PRO — Logic Engine. IF and THEN rules built by clicking blocks: set the conditions, then the changes, and products that don’t match are left alone. Chain rules in order and save a chain to run again.
• ⭐ PRO — Undo. Every bulk change saves what it touched before it runs, so you can put it back.
• ⭐ PRO — Coupon Manager. Every coupon in one editable grid: codes, discount types, amounts, limits, expiry dates and restrictions.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk shipping and tax. Weights, dimensions, shipping class, tax status and tax class.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk attributes. Add attributes to many products, set their options, or convert products to variable in bulk.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk categories, brands and tags. Add, replace or remove terms across a selection.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk content. Product names, SKUs, descriptions and short descriptions, including find and replace.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk images. Give many products the same featured image or gallery, or clear them.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk status and custom fields. Visibility, featured, virtual and downloadable, download files, limits and expiry, and your own fields.
• ⭐ PRO — Bulk delete. Remove products in one operation.
• ⭐ PRO — Attribute Templates and the Bulk Attribute Editor. Save the attributes a product type always needs, then fill in a whole category’s values side by side in one grid.
• ⭐ PRO — Widget Styles. Colours, fonts and spacing for every filter widget, with a live preview.
• ⭐ PRO — Copy your setup. Export your filters, styles and templates, then import them on the next site.

⭐ Try Pro Free For 7 Days

Every Pro feature unlocked for seven days. Cancel before the trial ends and you pay nothing. And if you do buy and it turns out not to be the right fit, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Start your trial at https://shopmasterplugins.com

Third-party assets

Two typefaces are included in the plugin and served from your own site, so no
page calls an outside server for them. Both are licensed under the SIL Open
Font License 1.1, and the license text for each sits beside the font files in
assets/fonts/.

• Instrument Sans — Copyright 2022 The Instrument Sans Project Authors
• IBM Plex Mono — Copyright 2017 IBM Corp.

Source code

The source of the plugin’s admin script, the build step that produces the
file shipped here, and instructions for running it are at:

https://github.com/jmvandeventer/vandev-catalog-workbench

Every other file in the plugin ships exactly as it is written. Nothing in
the plugin is minified, compiled or obfuscated.

External services

This plugin uses Freemius to offer an optional opt-in, and to handle upgrades and licenses for the paid version.

• What is sent: if a site admin chooses to opt in, Freemius receives the admin’s name and email address, the site address, and the WordPress, PHP and plugin versions. If the admin skips the opt-in, nothing is sent.
• When: at opt-in, and after that when the plugin is activated, deactivated or updated.
• Freemius terms of service: https://freemius.com/terms/
• Freemius privacy policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/

The plugin also links to https://shopmasterplugins.com for plans and documentation, and to https://users.freemius.com, where buyers download Pro. These pages open only when you click a link, and no data is sent to them.