Product Categories & Subcategories
Every product record in PMSuite carries a Product Category and a Sub Category field. Together they give your catalog a two-level grouping so that, as the number of products grows, your team can narrow down to the right item quickly when building orders, estimates, proposals and invoices.
Categories are attributes of the product record — they are set when you create or edit a product, alongside the product's Name, Price, Tax, HSN/SAC, Unit Type, SKU and Description.
Who can use it
Company Admin (and any role your company has given access to the Products area of the Sales module). Creating new categories and sub-categories from the product form is governed by separate product-category permissions, so a role that can edit products may still only be able to pick from existing groupings.
Prerequisites
- None. Category and Sub Category are optional fields on the product form, so you can start categorising at any point — including retroactively, by editing products you have already created.
How to Access
Navigation: Sidebar → Sales → Products (the Products list sits within the Orders/Products area of the Sales module). Open an existing product, or start a new one, and use the Product Category and Sub Category fields on the product form.
The Sales module dashboard is at /account/sales-dashboard, and Orders — where product line items are consumed — at /account/orders.
Using categories on a product
Step 1: Open the product form
From the Products list, click Add to create a new product, or open an existing product to edit it.
Step 2: Set Product Category
Pick the top-level grouping from the Product Category dropdown. If the grouping you need does not exist yet, use the Add button beside the dropdown to create it without leaving the product form. Use a name that is meaningful to whoever will be picking products later — for example a service line or a product family — rather than an internal code.
Step 3: Set Sub Category
The Sub Category dropdown lists only the sub-categories that belong to the category you chose in Step 2, so set the category first. Its Add button creates a new sub-category under that category. Sub Category is optional; a product with only a Product Category set is perfectly valid.
Step 4: Complete the rest of the product record and save
Fill in the remaining product fields — Name, Price, Tax, HSN/SAC, Unit Type, SKU, Description, the Client can purchase toggle, the Downloadable toggle and any file upload — then save. See Adding Products for the full field-by-field walkthrough.
Effect on other features
- Products: Category and Sub Category are stored on the product record itself, so they travel with the product wherever it is used. See Adding Products.
- Product import: The product import (Products list → Import) accepts Product Category and Sub Category columns alongside Product Name, Price, Unit Type, SKU and Description, so a batch of products can arrive already categorised. The import adds new products; it does not update products that already exist.
- Orders, estimates, proposals and invoices: These documents reference products as line items. Grouping products makes it faster to locate the right line item when building an order, an estimate or a proposal.
- Client-facing purchasing: Whether a client can buy a given product is controlled by the Client can purchase toggle on the product record, not by its category. Turning that toggle off stops the product being purchasable regardless of how it is categorised. See Shopping Cart.
Limitations
- Two levels only. The product record provides Product Category and Sub Category — there is no third level of nesting. Workaround: use descriptive product names, or the SKU field, to carry the extra level of detail you would otherwise nest.
- Category is a product attribute, not a container. Changing how a product is grouped means editing the product itself; there is no drag-and-drop re-filing of products between groups. Workaround: set the category up front by including the Product Category and Sub Category columns in the product import when you first load a batch; for products already in the list, open each product and change the two fields, which sit at the top of the product form.
- Client purchasing is not controlled at category level. There is no single switch that hides a whole category from clients. Workaround: turn off Client can purchase on each product in that group — filter or search the Products list by that grouping first so you work through a short list.
Troubleshooting
The Sub Category list is empty for the category I picked
The Sub Category dropdown only ever shows sub-categories belonging to the selected category, so an empty list means that category has none yet. Either leave Sub Category blank — it is optional — or use the Add button beside the field to create the sub-category you need before saving the product. If the Add buttons are not visible to you, your role does not have the product category permissions; ask a Company Admin to create the grouping or grant them.
A client can still see a product I meant to withhold
Category assignment does not control client visibility. Open the product and turn off the Client can purchase toggle; that is the setting that governs whether a client can buy it.
I changed a product's category and a document still shows the old grouping
Documents such as orders, estimates and invoices capture their line items at the time they are created. Re-check the product record itself to confirm the new category saved; existing documents are not retro-edited by a category change.