Organising Products with Categories
How to create and manage product categories in AskBiz POS — grouping your catalogue for faster till navigation, better reports, and cleaner inventory management.
Key Takeaways
- Categories group products so cashiers can browse by department rather than scrolling through every item.
- Sales reports break down by category, showing which departments generate the most revenue and margin.
- A clean category structure makes stock takes faster — you can count one category at a time.
Why categories matter
Without categories, your product catalogue is one flat list. For a business with 50 products that's manageable; for one with 500 products it becomes a serious usability problem at the till. Categories solve this by grouping related products — Beverages, Snacks, Clothing, Electronics, or whatever fits your business. They also unlock category-level reporting: instead of scrolling through every individual product's performance, you can see at a glance that your Clothing department generated 42% of revenue last month.
Creating a category
Go to POS > Operations > Retail > Categories. Click Add Category. Enter a Name (e.g. 'Beverages', 'Clothing', 'Fresh Produce'). Optionally add a colour — this colour appears as the category tile background on the till screen, making it visually distinct. You can also upload a small icon or image. Click Save. The category is now available to assign to products.
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Start for free →Assigning products to categories
Open any product in Operations > Retail > Products. In the Category dropdown, select the appropriate category. Save the product. You can change a product's category at any time without affecting its sales history. For bulk reassignment — for example if you want to move all drinks from a 'General' category to a new 'Beverages' category — use the CSV export, update the category column in the spreadsheet, and reimport.
Sub-categories
AskBiz supports one level of sub-categories. For example, the parent category 'Clothing' could have sub-categories 'Men's', 'Women's', and 'Children's'. Create sub-categories the same way as top-level ones, then assign a Parent Category in the form. On the till screen, tapping a parent category expands to show its sub-categories. In reports, you can view totals at the parent or sub-category level.
Category performance in reports
In POS Reports, select the Category breakdown view. You'll see Revenue, Units Sold, Gross Profit, and Margin % per category for any date range. This is one of the most useful retail metrics: if your Beverages margin is 65% but your Clothing margin is 18%, that insight should influence your buying decisions, floor layout, and promotional strategy. Categories with declining sales trends may need refreshing; categories with high margin and growing sales deserve more shelf space.