Product categories

A product category groups products that belong together, such as "Accessories", "Spare parts" or "Flags". Each product can have one category. Categories help you find and filter products, and the category shows up in reports such as Inbounded inventory items.

Categories belong to an account, just like products. A category name must be unique within its account (ignoring upper/lower case).

The categories overview

Go to Products › Product categories. The table shows:

Column	Meaning
Account	The account the category belongs to. Only shown when your account has child accounts; can be filtered.
Name	The category name.
State	Concept, active or expired; can be filtered.
Parent category	The category this one is placed under, if any.
Created at	When the category was created.

Each row has a Products action that jumps to the products overview. Click a row to open the category.

Creating a category

You need to be a Boxture admin, a warehouse associate or an account owner of the account.

1. Go to Products › Product categories.
2. Open the card menu and click Create.
3. On the Attributes tab, enter a Name (required) and optionally a Description.
4. On the Meta Data tab you can add Notes and Metadata (YAML) for your own use.
5. Save the category.
6. Open the category menu and click Publish.

Publish the category

A new category starts in the concept state. Only active categories can be chosen on a product. If you can't find a category in the product's category list, check that it's published.

Categories are also created automatically by the product import: when the Product category column contains a name that doesn't exist yet in the product's account, a category with that name is created and made active. An existing category that isn't active is activated. See Creating products.

Category states

Categories have the same three states as products:

State	Meaning	Menu action
Concept	Newly created; can't be chosen on products yet.	Publish → active
Active	In use; can be chosen on products.	Expire → expired
Expired	No longer offered for new assignments.	Republish → active

Expiring a category doesn't change the products that already have it: they keep their category. You just can't assign an expired category to another product, or switch a product to it. Categories can't be deleted.

Assigning a category to a product

1. Open the product.
2. On the Attributes tab, choose the Product category. The list shows the active categories of the account (prefixed with the account name when your account has child accounts).
3. Save the product.

To change the category of many products at once, use the product import with the Product and Product category columns.

Using categories

• Filtering products: in the products overview, filter on the Category column to see only products of certain categories.
• Reports: the category is included in inbound reports, so you can analyse receipts per category.
• API: products can be listed by category name through the API. See API.