Catalogues and data sheets in PIM for Shopware: guide
With the Catalogues add-on you turn your Shopware product data into print-ready PDF catalogues and price lists, in the design of your shop. Chapters, prices, texts and images come straight from Shopware, and the finished catalogue can be offered for download in your shop.
- Choose chapters from category, preset, product group or manufacturer
- Take the design from the shop or ask the AI designer
- Check and generate as PDF, even for large ranges
- Publish in the shop or share via link
The Add-ons tab
The Add-ons tab lists all extensions of the PIM with status, price, trial, booking and licence key. Catalogues is the first add-on.
- Try: "Try free for 7 days" starts the trial for your shop. No cancellation needed.
- Book: monthly (cancellable monthly) or yearly in advance (cancellable at the end of the term). Billing runs via plugins.staw.io, the licence key is stored right away.
- Enter licence key: if you already have a key, enter it directly.
- Status: not booked, trial with end date, booked, cancelled or expired.
Create a catalogue or price list
Under the Catalogues menu item you start with "New catalogue" or "New price list". Every catalogue has a card with chapters, page count, status (draft, building, ready, error) and the buttons edit, generate, download, duplicate and delete.
In the General section you define what the catalogue is for:
- Style: B2B (compact) or B2C (image-led)
- Title and subtitle for the cover
- Sales channel, language and customer group: define prices, texts and look. Prices are calculated with the rules of the chosen customer group.
- Show prices and show product numbers
- Accent colour (empty: from the settings) and file name for the download
Chapters and sources
Every chapter has its own source and its own layout. You change the order with "Move up" and "Move down".
| Source | What ends up in the chapter |
|---|---|
| Category | All products of a category including subcategories, only those visible in the sales channel |
| Dynamic product group | Products matching the conditions of a dynamic product group |
| Preset | A saved filter from the product overview |
| Manufacturer | All products of one or more manufacturers |
| Product search | Search and select products one by one, optionally take over all hits |
| Content page | Texts and images of a shop page, landing page or shopping experience. Product boxes, forms and videos stay in the shop. |
| Free text | Your own text, optionally written by AI. Simple HTML with subheadings, lists and tables is allowed. |
For product chapters you set:
- Layout: 2, 3 or 4 columns, list or price table
- Variants: main products only, list variants or variants individually
- Sorting: name, product number, price ascending or descending, newest first or as selected
- Tier prices, images in the table and a short introduction at the start of the chapter
If a chapter has no source, the PIM names the affected chapters before it continues.
Cover, table of contents and foreword
- Cover in the layouts classic, full image or split, with a cover image
- Table of contents, clickable in the PDF
- Foreword with its own heading, written by you or by AI. The AI uses title, chapters and company name.
- Font: modern, classic or as in the shop
AI designer and AI texts
The AI designer turns a short briefing into a suggestion for style, colour, font, cover, chapters, texts and image ideas. Example briefing: "Garden furniture for consumers, premium, calm, lots of white space, summer mood". Nothing changes before you click "Apply". Chapters and titles and texts can be suggested again separately.
- Instruction for all AI texts of a catalogue, for example form of address, tone or terms that should or should not appear. It applies to foreword, introductions, text pages, short description, image ideas and the AI designer.
- Instruction per text, in addition to the general one, saved for this text.
- AI texts run via the AI provider you set up in the PIM settings. Results are saved as a draft right away.
AI images for cover and chapters
Cover image, chapter image (wide image above the start of the chapter) and mood page (full-page image with chapter title before the chapter, especially for B2C) are created by AI via fal.ai or Higgsfield. You store the key under settings, catalogues, AI images, and "Test connection" checks it without creating an image.
- Image description written by you or suggested by AI
- Product photo as template (fal.ai only): the real product photo is placed in a new setting, the product itself stays unchanged.
- Finished images land in the media management in the folder "KI Katalog". Each generation is billed by the provider directly to you.
Design based on your shop
With "Take design from the shop" switched on, main colour, logo and font come from the theme of the sales channel. You can upload your own font file (TTF or OTF, regular and bold) in the settings so the PDFs look like the shop. The default applies to all catalogues, in the Design section you change it per catalogue.
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| Colours | Accent colour, second colour for lines and table of contents, price colour, button colour in the viewer |
| Chapter header | Colour bar, title with line, text only or chapter image with title |
| Backgrounds | White or lightly tinted in the catalogue colour |
| Header | With divider, as a colour area or none, logo on the left, chapter name left or right |
| Viewer bar | Light, dark or in the catalogue colour, optionally with logo |
| Company name and footer | Shown in header, cover and footer |
The preview shows the viewer bar at the top and the first page of the first chapter below, and it refreshes after changes.
Check, preview and generate
- Check: shows chapters without products and products without image, price or description.
- Page view per chapter in the editor and a preview of the first chapters with a few products
- Generate: runs step by step, even for large ranges. A window shows progress, current chapter and remaining time, you can cancel and download right afterwards.
Product links, QR codes and campaigns
Every product can get a QR code to its product page. Product names and images are clickable in the PDF. With a campaign name the PIM adds utm_source=katalog, utm_medium=pdf and utm_campaign to all links and QR codes, so your web analytics shows which visits come from the catalogue.
Publish in the shop and catalogue page
- Publish in the shop: the catalogue is then available via a fixed link, for example for newsletters or customers.
- Catalogue page: a page in the shop with all released catalogues of the sales channel and download. You define address, heading, introduction, SEO text, meta title and meta description, the texts optionally by AI.
- Visible for: all visitors, logged-in customers only or certain customer groups. This applies to the catalogue page and the download link, visitors who are not logged in are sent to the login.
- Viewer: with "Open links in new tab" the catalogue opens in its own viewer, product links and QR codes open in a new tab and the catalogue stays open.
- Downloads: are counted, per catalogue and in the dashboard as "Catalogue downloads" for 30 days and in total.
Product data sheet as PDF
Under settings, catalogues, Data sheet in the shop you activate a download button on the product page. Customers download a PDF data sheet with images, prices and properties.
- Position: below the cart button, below the description or in both places
- Prices: as in the shop for the logged-in customer or without prices
- Image gallery below the main image
- Details: product number, EAN, manufacturer, manufacturer number, dimensions, weight, content, delivery time, description, properties and variants, each selectable
- Test data sheet: creates a data sheet for a product number without activating it in the shop.
Permission "Catalogues"
Whether regular users may create, generate and publish catalogues is controlled by the feature switch "Catalogues" in the config matrix. Super admins always may. More under Permissions & super admin.
What's next
You find the products for your chapters via saved filter presets in the product listing, and the dashboard shows missing texts and images beforehand. How a catalogue is made in practice is shown in the use case Create a Shopware PDF catalogue. Prices for the add-on are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Is the catalogue feature included in the PIM licence?
No. Catalogues and data sheets are a separate add-on with its own licence. You test it for 7 days free of charge and then book it monthly for €29.99 or yearly for €287.90, net.
Where do prices and texts in the catalogue come from?
Straight from Shopware: from the chosen sales channel, language and customer group. If a price changes, you simply generate the catalogue again.
How large can a catalogue be?
Generation runs step by step, even for large ranges. A window shows progress and remaining time. From the product list, "Catalogue from selection" takes over the first 400 selected products.
Can I release catalogues to dealers only?
Yes. Under "Visible for" you choose all visitors, logged-in customers only or certain customer groups. This applies to the catalogue page and the download link.
What do the AI images cost?
Images are created via your own account at fal.ai or Higgsfield. Each generation is billed by the provider directly to you, the PIM adds no mark-up.