INVENTORY

Product Categories

Configuring categories for products will enable you to categorize and group products under different categories. Defining product categories is an important step to manage various operations related to a product. It is also possible to filter products based on the product categories. You can find the Product Categories option under the Configuration menu of the Inventory module.

When you enter this platform, you can view different types of product categories configured in the Inventory module. Using the New button, you can effortlessly create a new category.

Set a name for the new category in the given space. If this category belongs to any Parent Category, you can specify it in the respective field. The Route of this particular category can be specified in the Route field available under the Logistics tab. The Force Removal Strategy will define the removal strategy to remove a product from the source location. The Reverse Packaging field offers two options such as Reserve Only Full Packaging or Reserve Partial Packaging. Using the Reserve Only Full Packaging will allow you to reserve full packaging only. But in the case of the Reserve Partial Packaging, it is possible to reserve partial packages of the products.

The accounts used while validating a customer invoice and vendor bill can be specified in the Income Account and Expense Account, respectively. In the Inventory Valuation tab, you can define the Costing Method used to calculate the cost of the product under this category.

● Standard Price: The cost of the products will be calculated based on the standard price specified on each of them.

● Average Cost (AVCO): The cost of the products will be calculated based on the weighted average cost.

● First in First out (FIFO): The cost of the products will be calculated supposing that entering the company first will also leave it first.

The Inventory Valuation can be set as Automated and Manually. By selecting the Manually option, the accounting entries to value the inventory should be posted manually. But in the case of Automated Inventory Valuation, an accounting entry will be automatically created for valuing the inventory when a product enter or leaves the inventory. As soon as you select Automated Inventory Valuation, you will get some additional fields to define under the Account Stock Properties.

● Stock Valuation Account: When automated inventory valuation is enabled on a product, this account will hold the current value of the products.

● Stock Journal: When doing automated inventory valuation, this will be the account journal in which entries will be automatically posted when stock moves are processed.

● Stock Input Account: Counterpart journal items for all incoming stock moves will be posted in this account unless there is a specific valuation account set on the source location. This is the default value for all products in this category. It can also be set directly on each product.

● Stock Output Account: When doing automated inventory valuation, counterpart journal items for all outgoing stock moves will be posted in this account unless there is a specific valuation account set on the destination location.

Once you complete the configuration of the new product category, you will get the Products smart button to view the products under this category and the Putaway Rules smart button to manage the putaway rules of this product category.