How to save a product with no shop link

Not everything you own has a page you can paste. Gifts, salon bottles, discontinued shades, and samples arrive without a link. They still belong in the catalogue, because they are the products you will otherwise repurchase by accident. Add them by hand in Beauty Board: brand, name, shade, and a photo of the thing in your hand.

A missing link is not a reason to skip the record

Pasting is faster, which is why how to save a product from Sephora, Mecca, or anywhere else starts there. Hand add is the same record with more typing. Skip it and the catalogue lies. It will say you do not own the cream that is on the sink, and the next time you are in a shop you will believe it.

The products that most need a hand add are the ones that never had a receipt in your email: a gift, a decant, a shade the brand has since renamed, a hotel leftover you actually like. Those are also the ones that sit unlabeled.

Four fields, then stop

You do not need a perfect product page. You need enough to find it again.

• Brand and product name, written the way you would search them.
• Shade, size, or line, if there is one. The number if you can still read it.
• A photo of this bottle, not a picture from the internet of a bottle that looks similar.
• Where it came from, even if that is only "gift" or "salon."

Mark a status if you know. Using, Saved, or Tried. Then put it on a list or a board so it has a home. A hand-added product with no home is as easy to forget as an unsaved one.

When you should still try to find a link

If the product is current and you will want to restock it, search the brand site or the shop you use and paste that page as well. The hand-added photo stays useful; the link makes the next purchase a tap. If the shade is gone, do not paste a near shade and pretend it is the same. Leave the record as the thing you own, and write "discontinued" in the note if that will stop you hunting.

Samples and sachets almost never have a useful link. Photograph the card with the pot, then the pot alone, so the name survives the card.

The photo is the field people skip

Type is searchable. A photo is recognisable. Creams and brown bottles need both. Take the picture on the counter, crop out the clutter, and live with a slightly ugly photo. A beautiful campaign still of the wrong shade is how the record goes wrong.

Add the next unlabeled bottle tonight. Brand, name, one photo. The catalogue only works if it includes the products that were too awkward to paste.