Material Categories
Categories let you organise your materials into groups — for example, “Filters”, “Electrical components”, “Refrigerants”, or whatever fits your inventory. Once set up, you can filter the materials list by category to find what you’re looking for quickly.
Category hierarchy
Section titled “Category hierarchy”Categories can be nested. You could have a top-level “Filters” category with subcategories “Air filters”, “Oil filters”, and “Water filters” underneath. There’s no limit on depth.
When filtering the materials list by a category, materials in any of its subcategories are included automatically.
Active and inactive categories
Section titled “Active and inactive categories”Each category can be marked active or inactive. A category is only fully active if it and all of its parent categories are active. If a parent category is inactive, its subcategories are effectively inactive too, regardless of their own setting.
Inactive categories are not shown to users when assigning categories to materials. If a category disappears from the selection options, check whether a parent category has been deactivated.
Managing categories
Section titled “Managing categories”Go to Materials → Categories to see the full category tree.
Creating a category
Section titled “Creating a category”Click Add category and fill in:
- Name — the category name
- Description — optional, for internal reference
- Parent category — select a parent to nest this category, or leave blank for a top-level category
- Active — whether this category is available for use
Editing a category
Section titled “Editing a category”Open any category from the list to edit its name, description, parent, or active status.
Moving a category to a different parent repositions it (and its subcategories) in the tree.
Deleting a category
Section titled “Deleting a category”Delete from the category’s edit page. Deleting a category removes it and all of its subcategories. Material records that were assigned to the deleted category lose that assignment.
Assigning categories to materials
Section titled “Assigning categories to materials”Categories are assigned on the material record itself. When creating or editing a material, select one or more categories from the category picker. Only active categories (with all active ancestors) are shown.
A material can belong to multiple categories at the same time.