Establish your inventory categories

When to use this procedure

Follow the steps below to create inventory categories and subcategories for your business.

WARNING This is a one-time procedure. Once you've established your inventory categories or entered inventory into AIMsi, changes to your categories and subcategories MUST be made from the Maintenance menu in Maintain Inventory Categories and Maintain Sub Categories. Tri-Tech strongly recommends that once you've completed this procedure, you deny access to this function in the Permission Groups. You will lose data if you complete this procedure after you make changes to your inventory elsewhere in AIMsi.

Steps to complete

AIMsi is installed with several basic category and subcategory definitions based on your industry type. These will be loaded for you based on the industry you choose on the Establish Inventory Categories window.

  1. On the Admin menu, click Establish Inventory Categories. The Establish Inventory Categories window displays.
  2. Select the industry that most closely matches yours from the buttons on the right. Relevant categories populate the grid.

  1. Edit any categories as necessary directly in the grid. You may also choose to add or delete inventory categories based on your business needs.
  2. Note: Any category you add must have at least 1, but no more than 99, associated subcategories.

  3. Click a category and then click the Sub Categories tab to edit that category's subcategories as needed.

  1. Click Save. Once you click save you will be unable to edit your new categories and subcategories from this window. Instead, you will need to update your categories and subcategories using the Maintain Categories and Maintain Sub Categories options on the Maintenance > Inventory Maintenance menu. Ledger accounts associated with each category are added to the chart of accounts; these accounts are cost of inventory, sales of inventory, and cost of goods sold.