Vegetables, fish, beef, dairy, spirits, cleaning. Categories are how you find a product in five hundred, and how you count a walk-in by section.
Categories and families
A category is the shelf — produce, meat, seafood, dairy, dry goods, beverages.
A family sits inside a category: Beef and Chicken inside Meat. A product belongs to a family through its canonical product, and the family decides its category.
So you never file a product by hand. File the family once, and every product of that family follows.
One list for the group
Categories belong to the organization, not to a venue. Every venue sorts the same way, and a new organization starts with a sensible default list.
Where they show
On Ingredients, on the ingredient sheet, and on Inventory Count — filter the count to one category and walk one section at a time.
Managing the list
Inventory → Categories.
Add a category. Rename it. Reorder the list.
Move a family to another category. Every product of the family moves with it.
Delete a category. NexReps asks where its families go first, so nothing is left without a home.
Next
Units and conversions — why the kilo and the case must agree.