How to Create a Product Category in EDGEBIC

To create a product category in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, click Manage Categories on the Product page toolbar, click New, enter a Name and Code, tick Active, and click Save. You can also create one without leaving a product you are entering by clicking the New button beside the Category dropdown on the product dialog. Categories are the grouping the product grid uses by default, so a tidy set of them is what makes a large catalog navigable. For the full product screen, see how to set up products in EDGEBIC.

Before you start

• You can see the Product tab and its toolbar.
• You know what the category is for. Categories are for grouping, filtering, and report banding, not for scheduling behavior. The scheduler ignores them entirely.
• You have a short name in mind that will not collide with an existing one. Names are unique regardless of case.
• If several categories are going in at once, do them in one session from the Manage Categories window rather than one at a time from product forms.

Steps

1. Open the Product tab from the main navigation.
2. Click Manage Categories in the toolbar. The Manage Product Categories window opens.
3. Click New.
4. Enter the Name. This is the label that appears on the product form's dropdown, on the grid's group bands, and in the toolbar filter. Keep it plain: Raw Materials, Sub-Assemblies, Finished Goods.
5. Enter the Code, a short identifier for the category.
6. Enter an optional Description.
7. Tick Active so the category appears in the dropdown for new products.
8. Click Save.
9. Repeat for any further categories, then click Close.

To create one mid-flight instead, open a product with Add Product or the edit button, then click New beside the Category dropdown. The category is created in place and you carry on without losing the entries already in the dialog.

What changes when you save

The category becomes selectable on the product form at once. Nothing else moves.

Assigning a product to the category is a separate action on the product record, covered in how to add a new product.

How to check it worked

1. Open the toolbar's Category dropdown on the Product page. The new category should be listed alongside the existing ones and "all categories".
2. Edit any product, open its Category dropdown, and confirm the new entry appears.
3. Assign one product to it and save, then look at the grid. The product should move under a group band carrying the new category name.
4. Select the category in the toolbar filter and confirm only the assigned products show. Click the clear button beside the filter to return to the full list.

Common mistakes

Reusing a name. The uniqueness check ignores case, so Finished goods collides with Finished Goods. Search the existing list before typing.

Creating too many. The grid groups by category by default, and forty thin categories are harder to read than eight meaningful ones. Split a band only when it stops being scannable.

Deleting instead of deactivating. Deleting is blocked while active products still reference the category, which is the correct guard. When a grouping is genuinely retired, untick the active flag: existing product assignments survive and the category simply stops offering itself to new products.

Forgetting saved import masks after a rename. Products follow a rename automatically because they reference the category record. An import mask that names the category in a column mapping does not, and the import fails until the mapping is corrected.

Categories pair naturally with the unit of measure list: see how to add a unit of measure for the other lookup worth setting up before a catalog import. All the single-task recipes are indexed in the EDGEBIC how-to library, and the EDGEBIC product page shows what the catalog feeds once it is organized.