Item Classes (Business Lines)

What is it and what is it for?

An Item Class is a category you assign to your items to classify them by the business segment they belong to (for example, "Electronics", "Spare Parts" or "Services"). Each item is linked to a single class, but a class can hold thousands of items.

Once you have your classes created and assigned to items, AdmCloud uses them to:

• Group sales, costs and margins by class in your reports, so you can tell which business segment is more profitable.
• Automatically post each document (invoices, notes, inventory adjustments, etc.) to the chart-of-accounts accounts you configure per class — sales, cost of sales, discounts, returns, inventory, adjustments and more — without having to pick the account manually on every transaction.
• Set sales or expense budgets per item class.
• Configure authorized discounts and sales commission rules specific to a class.
• Classify CRM opportunities and marketing campaigns, as well as fixed assets and projects, by item class.
• Set the default class for a customer, vendor or employee.

How to use it

1. Open the Item Classes list and click New Item Class.
2. Type the class's Name (required).
3. If your plan allows it, pick a Parent Class to nest this class under another one and build a hierarchy (up to 3 levels: for example Category → Subcategory → Specific class). If you don't pick a parent, the new class stays at the top level.
4. Optionally, assign the accounting accounts you want to automate for this class (sales, cost of sales, discounts, returns, inventory, adjustments, promotions and, if your company handles manufacturing, dispatched raw material and rejected finished products). Every account you pick must exist in your chart of accounts and be in the same currency as your company.
5. If your company handles several subsidiaries, choose which subsidiaries this class should be available in (or leave it available in all of them).
6. Add optional Notes and check Inactive if, for now, you don't want the class to show up available for selection on new records.
7. Click Save. The class is immediately available to assign on Items and on every other screen that uses it.
8. If your plan includes the Hierarchy View, from the list you can open a tree-shaped diagram that visually shows how all your classes are nested (read-only, useful for a quick review of the full structure). The chart is interactive: you can search, expand or collapse branches, zoom in and out, switch between vertical and horizontal, and print it.

Main capabilities

• Up to 3 levels of hierarchy (a class, its parent and its grandparent), available depending on your plan.
• Read-only tree-diagram hierarchy view to visualize the entire structure at a glance.
• Linking to up to 11 different accounting accounts, to automate the posting of sales, costs, inventory, adjustments, promotions and manufacturing entries by class.
• Availability configurable per subsidiary, for companies with several subsidiaries.
• Autocomplete and search-enabled selector when choosing the class from other screens (Items, Budgets, Commission Rules, Authorized Discounts, CRM, Fixed Assets, Projects, etc.).
• Mark a class as Inactive without deleting it, so you stop using it on new records without losing the history of documents that already have it assigned.

Key fields

Validations when saving

• Name is required and cannot be duplicated among classes that share the same parent class (the same name can be reused on different levels of the hierarchy).
• A class cannot be its own parent, nor become a child of one of its own child classes (no circular references allowed).
• The parent class you pick must exist.
• No more than 3 hierarchy levels are allowed (a class, its parent and its grandparent, at most).
• Every accounting account you select must exist in your chart of accounts and must be in the same currency as your company; otherwise AdmCloud rejects the record.

Deleting an Item Class

AdmCloud blocks the deletion of a class that is being used by other records, to protect the integrity of your data. In particular, you cannot delete a class that has:

• Items assigned to it.
• Child classes that use it as their parent.
• Is the default class of a customer, vendor or employee.

In addition, if the class has transactions, budgets, payroll entries, automated processes, discounts, commission rules, CRM opportunities or campaigns, fixed assets, projects or accounting allocation rules associated with it, AdmCloud also rejects the deletion and lists which records are using it, so you can review them before trying again. In those cases, it's usually better to mark the class as Inactive instead of deleting it.

Availability, permissions and conditions

• This feature depends on the "Item Classes" capability enabled on your contract; if your plan does not include it, the screen shows a "not available on this edition" message. On the Enterprise edition, it also requires the Inventory module to be active.
• The Parent Class field and the Hierarchy View are only shown if your plan allows multi-level hierarchies for cost centers/item classes; without that capability, you can only create single-level classes.
• The Subsidiaries tab and the field to limit a class to selected subsidiaries only show up if your company has several subsidiaries active.
• The Rejected Finished Products Account is only shown if your company has rejected finished-product quantity tracking active (manufacturing).
• Access to this screen is controlled with the "Item Classes" permission of the user group, with separate levels for browsing, adding, editing and deleting.

Tips and common mistakes