Categories & Tags

Categories and tags let you organise your products so you can filter reports, apply bulk actions, and keep your Goods List readable as your catalogue grows.

Categories vs Tags

A product can belong to one category but can have unlimited tags.

Managing Categories

Creating a category

1. Go to Settings → Categories
2. Click + Add Category
3. Enter a Category name (e.g. Electronics)
4. Optionally select a Parent category to create a sub-category (e.g. Audio under Electronics)
5. Optionally add a description and a colour (used as a visual badge in tables)
6. Click Save

Category hierarchy example

Electronics
├── Audio
│   ├── Headphones
│   ├── Speakers
│   └── Microphones
├── Computers
│   ├── Laptops
│   └── Desktops
└── Accessories
    ├── Cables
    └── Chargers

Apparel
├── Men
│   ├── Shirts
│   └── Trousers
└── Women
    ├── Dresses
    └── Jackets

StockFlow supports up to 5 levels of nesting.

Editing a category

1. Go to Settings → Categories
2. Click the category name
3. Edit name, parent, or description
4. Click Save

Important: Changing a category’s parent repositions it and all its children in the hierarchy. This does not affect the products assigned to it.

Deleting a category

A category cannot be deleted if it has products assigned to it. First reassign or delete those products, then delete the category.

Managing Tags

Creating a tag

Tags are created automatically when you type them on a product record, or you can pre-create them:

1. Go to Settings → Tags
2. Click + Add Tag
3. Enter the tag name (lowercase, hyphens allowed — e.g. on-sale, seasonal, discontinued)
4. Optionally assign a colour
5. Click Save

Bulk-adding tags to products

1. Go to Goods List
2. Select multiple products using the checkboxes
3. Click Bulk Actions → Add Tags
4. Select or type the tags to apply
5. Click Apply

Removing a tag from all products

Go to Settings → Tags, find the tag, click the three-dot menu → Remove from all products. This removes the tag from every product in one operation but does not delete the tag definition itself.

Using categories and tags in filters

Once set up, you can filter by category or tag throughout the app:

Category-level pricing rules

You can set a default markup per category. When you add a new product to that category, the retail price will auto-populate as: Cost price × (1 + markup %).

Set this in Settings → Categories → [Category name] → Default markup.

Best practices

• Keep categories broad and stable — you shouldn’t need to rename them often
• Use tags for transient attributes like on-sale, clearance, new-arrival that change regularly
• Avoid creating too many top-level categories — aim for fewer than 10 at the root level
• Use a consistent naming convention for tags — e.g. all lowercase with hyphens, no spaces