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[Kathy Long]

Hello,

I’m looking for some advice on setting up Item Categories.  We are on Nav 2015.

According to Microsoft, “this field is used to classify the item for filtering and reporting.  It is also used to set defaults for Costing Method, General Product Posting Group, and Inventory Posting Group”. 

Based on that, it sounds like this field is for informational purposes only, other than to set the defaults for new items, and that it has no effect on any transactions.  Can anyone confirm that?

Also, it sounds like the Item Categories should be compatible with the Warehouse Classes, which are defined in the Inventory > Warehouse module.  Am I on the right track with this or doesn’t it matter?

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Kathy Long
Ramco Specialties
Hudson OH
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[Kim Dallefeld]

Your analysis of Item Categories is correct. They do not have any functional impact other than the defaults when setting up an item. They are great for reporting as the item category field is on every sales line and purchase line.

I do believe that Warehouse classes are to your locations like item categories are to items. Basically groupings of like data.

Were you needing something other than you defined?

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Kim Dallefeld
VP Professional Services
Syte Consulting Group
kdallefeld@sytecg.com

Past NAVUG Board Chairman
NAVUG Programming Committee
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[Kathy Long]

?Thank Kim!

That’s great information and exactly what I was looking for.

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Kathy Long
Ramco Specialties
Hudson OH
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[Aaron Brown]

Item categories are great for filtering.  It’s the first thing I filter on when reviewing item ledger entries.  I’ll echo Kim’s note, too:  they’re great for reporting. 

We use them as the broadest grouping level:  Raw Materials, Packaging and Finished Goods.  It’s helpful to keep them short.  We abbreviated them to 2 or 3 letters: RM, PKG, FG

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Aaron Brown
Director of Finance
Oregon Ice Cream
Camas WA
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[Mathew Ealy]

Depending on how many SKUs you carry they become very valuable in the BI space of reporting when set up properly.

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Mathew Ealy
Nav Support Specialist
Rentokil N. America
Reading PA
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[Franz Kalchmair]

selecting an item category when creating a new item, (pre-)sets the main posting groups and the costing method. 

this works til nav 2016, was changed with nav 2017.

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Franz Kalchmair
Microsoft MVP
Senior Consultant
Vienna, Austria, Europe
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[Craig Whitlock]

Item Categories are brilliant. Especially in NAV 2017 onward where they seem to have merged product group codes and item category codes.

We have an eCommerce solution which directly looks at the ICC table so reporting is so easy for us. 

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Craig Whitlock
IT Manager
Carver (Wolverhampton) Ltd
Wolverhampton
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