Item Categories

As your business grows, you might have more items in your stock and managing them becomes more challenging. In Zoho ERP, you can classify your items under several categories. This helps you organize your stock and access them easily, resulting in better inventory management.

Enable Item Category

To get started with Item categories, you will have to enable the same from the settings.

Click the Gear icon on the top right corner.
Scroll down to Module Settings.
Navigate to Items under General.
Go to the Field Customization tab.
Hover on the Category field.
Click the dropdown and select Mark as Active.

Create Item Category

To add a new item category:

Go to Items in the left sidebar.
Create a new Item or edit an existing one.
On the item creation/edit page, click the Categories dropdown.
Select Manage Categories option from the dropdown.
Click Add New Category in the pop-up.
Enter the Category Name and select the Parent Category which it should come under.
If you are creating a parent category, leave the Parent Category field empty.
To create a subcategory, select the appropriate parent category.
Click Save to add the category to the list of categories.
Hover over the category that you wish to associate with the item, and click Apply this Category.

Scenario: Patricia is organizing her inventory categories. She creates Stationery as a parent by leaving the Parent Category field empty. To create Pens as a subcategory, she selects Stationery as the parent category. She can further create Parker Pens and Highlighters as subcategories under Pens.

Pro Tip: You can assign a category to an individual item, item variants or a composite item.

Other Actions

You can edit, delete the categories you created.

Edit

You can edit the item category to update its details. Any changes made will apply to all items associated with that category.

To edit an existing category,

Go to Items in the left sidebar.
Create a new item or edit an existing one.
On the item creation/edit page, choose the Categories field.
Select Manage Categories option from the dropdown.
This will trigger a pop up for managing categories.
In the list of categories, hover over the category that you want to edit.
Click Edit which will open the category details.
Make the necessary changes and click Save.

Pro Tip: You can view items of a particular category by using the Advanced Search option or by creating a Custom View of columns.

Delete

Remove an item category that is no longer needed. Once deleted, the category will be permanently removed and cannot be recovered.

To delete a category:

Prerequisite:

You have to delete the subcategories first to delete the parent category.
A category that is associated with an item cannot be deleted. To delete the category, first remove it from the item and then proceed with the deletion.