Catalogs are fundamental to managing your product offerings and pricing within Flowglad. They allow you to group products and their associated prices, enabling flexible segmentation and customization for different customer groups.

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What is a Catalog?

Think of a Catalog as a distinct price list or product offering. Key characteristics include:

  • Product Grouping: Each Catalog contains a specific set of Products and their Prices.
  • Exclusive Association:
    • Every Product must belong to exactly one Catalog.
    • Every Customer is associated with exactly one Catalog (either explicitly assigned or implicitly via the Default Catalog).

This structure is the foundation for controlling which customers see which products and at what price points.

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Why Use Catalogs?

Catalogs are essential for implementing sophisticated pricing strategies:

  • Customer Segmentation: Easily offer different pricing tiers or product bundles to distinct customer segments (e.g., regional pricing, tiered plans).
  • Bespoke Deals: Create unique, customized catalogs for individual high-value customers with specific negotiated rates across multiple products.
  • Smooth Price Migrations: Introduce new pricing structures gradually. New customers can be onboarded onto a new catalog with updated prices, while existing customers remain grandfathered on their original catalogs.

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Common Use Cases

Here are practical examples of how Catalogs can be applied:

Cohort-Specific Offers

Create a dedicated catalog with special rates for a particular group, such as startups participating in an accelerator program (e.g., a “YC Discount Catalog”).

Custom Enterprise Pricing

Need to offer a unique deal to a large customer? Duplicate your standard catalog, adjust the prices as needed for that specific deal, and assign this new, bespoke catalog directly to that customer.

Phased Price Updates

When updating your general pricing, create a new catalog reflecting the changes. Set this new catalog as the default. All new signups will receive the updated pricing, while existing customers continue uninterrupted on their current catalogs.

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Managing Catalogs

You can create and manage your catalogs through the Flowglad dashboard (under Store > Catalogs) or programmatically via the API.

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Creating Catalogs

You have two options when creating a new catalog:

  1. From Scratch: Start with an empty catalog and add products and prices as needed.
  2. Duplicate an Existing Catalog: Create an exact copy of an existing catalog, including all its products and prices. This is highly useful for creating variations or bespoke versions (like the enterprise example) without rebuilding everything. The duplicated catalog is entirely independent, so modifications won’t impact the original.

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Default Catalogs

Every organization designates one catalog as the Default Catalog.

When a new Customer is created without an explicitly specified catalogId, they are automatically assigned to the organization’s current Default Catalog.

You can change which catalog serves as the default at any time. This is the key mechanism for the phased price update use case, ensuring all future customers automatically receive the latest standard pricing.

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Assigning Catalogs to Customers

While new customers often receive the Default Catalog automatically, you can control catalog assignments precisely:

  • At Creation: Specify a catalogId when creating a customer to assign them to a non-default catalog immediately.
  • Updating Existing Customers: You can change a customer’s associated catalog at any point using the API. (Dashboard support for updating a customer’s catalog is planned). This allows you to migrate specific customers between different pricing tiers or offerings manually.