Can you please comment on how to use the Product Category classification?
For example, for a really simple business, do you just create two categories, one for goods and another for services?
You may also want to look at the documentation for account categories: Usage — trytond_account_product latest documentation
For really simple businesses you may only want to give each product an account category, and not bother with standard categories at all.
The account categories you will need will depend on which accounts you want to use for the revenue and expenses associated with the products, and what taxes need to apply to them.
I understand the technical aspects of this issue
My question relates to the practical implementation: how many of these categories should a small business or freelancer create on their first week in Tryton?
A few examples come to mind:
- services category
- consulting (hours, days, giving speeches, etc)
- subscriptions (web hosting, phone numbers, etc)
- goods category
- re-sale
- manufactured
It may be useful to create between 4 and 6 basic categories like this from the wizard so people can start more quickly.
The product categories are informational, so they are not needed. But the account category on product is important to fulfil the laws of your country. I would say you need at least one account category to start with. Default taxes are useful, too. In some countries separate accounts for goods and services are also needed…HIH
This is confusing
When I create an Account Category, it appears in the list of Product Categories. Why?
When browsing the tree on the left-hand side of the Tryton GUI, I could not find a node for Account Categories. It only shows the nodes for Product Categories. The Account Categories and Product Categories both appear under the same node there.
I agree with what you say: the Account Category is linked to the accounts for revenue and expense so it is more significant than a Product Category hierarchy.
Indeed I also find sometimes an option to search for accounting categories, specially when configuring accounting because I do not care about the other categories.
So I think we can add a new view which shows the categories tree but filtering the ones that have the accounting checkbox set.
Because an account category is the same model as a product category with additional accounting information. This way you are able to organize the product structure together with the accounting requirements. But also, if you like/need the opposite, you are able to use a different product structures for accounting and other aspects.
This is IMHO a good feature, because you can set the minimal accounting preferences at the root node category and let them inherit by the branches and leaf categories. This great simplifies the product structuring for sales/purchase people without knowledge of the needed accounting preferences.