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Item category

Item Category

An Item Category is a node in a hierarchical structure where Items of similar characteristics are placed.

The Item Category hierarchy can be user defined or represented as a Brick in the GS1 standard. It represents one node in a hierarchical structure used to group Items. This can represent a standard grouping following the GPC hierarchy from GS1 or you can create your own structure. The important property of this grouping is that it represents your way of grouping the Products and Services together.

Example:

GPC foundation

GPC Example

We expect all Items to have a category, it can either be on the lowest level like “Non-Alcoholic, Low-Fat Beer” or it can be on a higher level like “Beverages”, or anywhere in between. Some customers require 5 levels in the category tree structure, some have only 2, or even just 1, all are supported.

To be able to provide Items with categories you need to create all your categories first. Once this is done you need to provide an Item Category Id on each Item.

Read more about Item Category inheritance here

Statuses​

The Status is used to manage the lifespan of an Item Category. If an Item Category is to be active and part of the retail business, it has a status for it called ACTIVE.

Deleted Item Categories are typically kept for historical reasons. An Item Category that has status DELETED is considered no longer in service, and should be ignored by most systems - except for reporting perhaps.

StatusDescription
ACTIVEActive means the entity is active and available for normal operation. It can be used, processed and displayed as expected.
DELETEDDeleted indicates that the entity is deleted and should not be used. It may be displayed but it should never be part of active results or part of business logic unless it actually is to return it to an active state.