Categories, brands and makers

Three separate records describe where a product belongs. Only the first is compulsory.

	Needed on a product?	Nests?	Plan
Category	Yes	Yes	All plans (nesting needs Growth)
Brand	No	Yes	Growth
Manufacturer	No	No	Professional

A brand is the name on the packet — Coca-Cola. A manufacturer is who actually makes it. They are separate on purpose, and a brand can point at a manufacturer.

How to create a category

Do this before you start adding products — every product must have one.

1. Go to Stock → Catalog → Categories and click New record.
2. Type a Name.
3. Optionally pick a Parent category to nest it, set a Display order, add a Description and a Logo, and turn on Show online if you have a storefront.
4. Leave Slug blank — it is generated from the name.
5. Click Save.

How to create a brand

1. Go to Stock → Catalog → Brands and click New record.
2. Type a Name, and optionally pick the Manufacturer that makes it.
3. Click Save.

Manufacturers work the same way, under Stock → Catalog → Manufacturers.

There are no tags

Categories, brands and manufacturers are the whole classification story, plus attributes for size and colour and the per-product Specifications tab.

If you are used to tagging products freely, there is nothing here that does that.

Categories

Every product must have one, so set these up before you start adding products.

A category has a name, an optional parent, an optional branch, a display order, a web address, a description, an online switch, a status and pictures.

Nesting needs the Growth plan

On the entry and Standard plans the Parent category field is visible but greyed out with an upgrade prompt, which reads like a fault rather than a plan limit. Categories on those plans are a flat list.

There is no depth limit above Growth.

Brands and manufacturers

Both are straightforward records — name, optional branch, web address, description, online switch, status and pictures. Manufacturers also take a website.

Brands can sit under other brands, and point at a manufacturer. Those are two different relationships on one screen and they are easy to confuse: the parent brand is a hierarchy, the manufacturer is who makes the goods.

Deleting

Deleting is never blocked and never warns

For categories, brands and manufacturers alike, deleting asks only “are you sure” — it does not check whether products are using the record.

Afterwards the record disappears from every list and picker, but products that used it still point at it. The result is a product whose category or brand shows nothing at all, with no warning beforehand and no tidy-up afterwards.

Check what is using a record before deleting it, or set it inactive instead.

Things worth knowing

• There is no drag-and-drop ordering. Rearranging means typing a new display order number on each record.
• Categories, brands and manufacturers can each be tied to a single branch, or left open to the whole company.

Related

• The product record
• Units and packs