Product > categories

Support User
#1

Hello,
could somebody be so kind and share a sensible structure of product categories?
My guess is that the top level category should be full/reduced/free VAT - and as children we need the different expenses and revenue accouts. Does that make sense?

Cheers,
Wolf

#2

Could you explain more about what are you looking for?

#3

Thanks for your attention.
I’m trying to understand the concept… So a screenshot of a setup could be helpful - or an explanation, how this categories thing works in general.
Hope I’m clear enough…

#4

Product categories do not have any special way to work.
It is just a way to organize/group products.
There is only the accounting categories for which the structure may be important if you use the “Use Parent’s accounts” flag. But you can simply use a flat structure.

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#5

It’s quite hard to give a good example of some product categories because it is very dependent on what your products are, and how you want to group and manage them. The Accounting categories (ones with the Accounting checkbox set) help you manage the taxes and accounts for the products. The non Accounting categories can just help you organise the products.

That does make sense, and would be a perfectly valid way of doing it.

Something you may want to consider is grouping your products based on their properties, instead of their tax status. If you were a shop you might want (as Accounting categories:

Shoes
Clothes
    Shirts
        Full VAT
        Reduced VAT
    Jumpers
Accessories

Then you could set appropriate taxes and accounts for each of these. This would then allow you to get a list of all the Clothes, or just Jumpers. And with the shirts would allow you to have the right taxes, and still list just the Shirts.

You could then add additional (non Accounting) categories to group products together

Range
    Spring Summer 2020
    Autumn Winter 2020

Then it would be easy to get a list of all the Spring Summer 2020 products, including Shoes, Jumpers, Shirts etc.

Like I said, it all depends on how you want to manage and group your products.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas.

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