Product categories sort your products, for example by department, season or promotion. This page is for the person who keeps the catalogue.
Categories do not depend on families. A family holds the attributes that make a configurable product’s variants. A category decides nothing about the product, and only says where it belongs in your catalogue. A product can be in several categories at once, and a category can hold products from any family.
Categories vs. Families
These two are easy to confuse, so here is a comparison:
| Families | Categories | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Hold the attributes that make a configurable product’s variants | Sort products for the terminal and the Z-report |
| Membership | A product has one family at most | A product can be in many categories |
| Effect on data | Adds no field to a product | Adds no field to a product |
| Variant generation | Variant attributes make the variants | No effect on variants |
Think of it this way: a family answers “what kind of thing is this?”, and a category answers “where do I look for it?”.
Example
A “Bluetooth Speaker” product might:
- Belong to the Electronics family.
- Be in the Audio Equipment, Portable Devices and Gift Ideas categories. The terminal then shows it under each of the three.
How Categories Work
You can nest categories into a tree of any depth. You can file a product in a category at any level, and not only at the bottom of a tree.
A parent category counts nothing below it. The terminal’s filter and the Z-report read only the categories that a product is filed in. If you want a product under both a child category and its parent, file it in both.
Example Category Trees
By department:
Electronics
├── Computers
│ ├── Laptops
│ ├── Desktops
│ └── Accessories
├── Phones
└── AudioBy season or occasion:
Seasonal
├── Summer 2025
├── Winter 2025
├── Ramadan Specials
└── Back to SchoolBy audience:
Target Audience
├── Professional
├── Consumer
├── Education
└── GovernmentOne product can appear in several trees. “Bluetooth Speaker” could be in “Audio”, in “Gift Ideas” and in “Summer 2025”.
Managing Categories
- Open Inventory → Setup and its Product Categories tab.
- Click New and create a top-level category for each broad way of sorting.
- To add a child category, click New and pick its Parent category.
- Open a product and go to its Categories tab.
- Click Add and pick the category. Beelocity saves the row as you go.
A product can be in as many categories as you need. The optional Position on that tab orders the product’s own categories, lowest first.
Two screens read a product’s categories:
- The terminal shows a chip for each category that holds a product, and a cashier taps a chip to filter the products.
- A session’s Z-report totals sales by category. It counts each product once, under the first of its categories, the one with the lowest Position. A product with no category appears under Uncategorized.
A category’s Slug is the short form of its name for a web address. If you leave it empty, Beelocity makes it from the name when you save, so Farines & Semoules becomes farines-semoules. If another category already has that slug, Beelocity adds a number. If you type your own, Beelocity keeps it. Renaming the category does not change the slug. No page uses a slug yet, so it changes nothing today.
Two categories can have the same name, under one parent or under two. You can have “Accessories” under “Electronics” and another “Accessories” under “Apparel”. Their slugs must differ. The pickers and the terminal show the name alone, so give two categories different names if a person has to tell them apart.
To stop using a category, open it, click Edit and turn off Active. The category keeps its products. The product’s Categories tab still offers it, and the terminal still shows it if a product is in it.
On the Product Categories page, the filter button beside the search box narrows the list to the children of one Parent. It can also show only Active or inactive categories (see Working with lists).
Tips
- Keep trees to 2 or 3 levels. Deeper trees are hard to read. “Electronics > Audio > Speakers” is useful. “Products > Consumer > Home > Living Room > Entertainment > Audio > Portable > Speakers” is not.
- Use several separate trees. Do not build one giant tree that tries to hold everything. Create separate top-level categories for each way of sorting, such as department, season and audience.
- File a product at any level. A product does not have to sit at the bottom of a tree. If a product covers all of “Electronics > Audio”, file it in “Audio”. Remember that “Electronics” then does not count it.
- Categories do not control access. A row access rule cannot read a category. It reads a warehouse, a storage location or the person who created a record. So you cannot limit a person to some categories of products.