Note: this feature is used mostly by businesses that purchase items at wholesale and then sell them in the retail market.   Creating categories assumes that you have set up catalog numbers for the products you order.  Most business, however, will either not use the Cat # field or they will use it for other purposes.  A discussion on the catalog number field is found here.

If, however, you sell the products that you order from vendor and you identify the products with your own catalog number, you might find this feature useful.

This allows you to group product ordered into categories.   Categories are set-up in the Stock Ordering Database.  To reach it, select STOCK TOOLS and PRODUCT INFORMATION & CATALOG NUMBERS.  On the Stock Ordering Screen that appears, click on the "C" button.

The following screen appears:

Categories are designated by a prefix followed by a forward slash (/) in the catalog number that you assign to the product.  In other words, the prefix is used with "Your" catalog number, not the vendor's catalog number.

For instance, let's say you sell books and maps, and you want to set up categories for each.  You decide to use the prefix BK for Books and the prefix MP for Maps.  Thus, two products with the catalog numbers of BK/NTB1 and BK/GIP1 would fall under the books' category.  And two products with catalog numbers of MP/ID10 and MP/MT10 would fall under the maps' category.

Categories are useful when you use the Stock Pop-up list, you can limit the products showing on the list to a selected category.  This makes picking products from the list easier.

When selecting prefixes, keep the prefix short.  The prefix takes up room and effectively shortens the length of the catalog number.  Catalog numbers can be up to 15 characters long.  If you use two characters for the prefix plus the slash mark, you're left with 13 characters for the catalog number.

Use the Category Prefixes dialog box to set up your categories.  When filling in the spreadsheet on the Category Prefixes dialog box, don't include the slash mark.  For example:  "BK" is correct and "BK/" is incorrect because it includes the slash mark.

If you'd like to have AnyPO insert the prefix to the beginning of the current catalog number showing on the Stock Ordering Screen, click on "Insert Prefix."

It isn't necessary to use categories, but the option is available should you wish to organize your products in this manner.