BusinessSensor can propose a starter list of actual products for you to stock — real device model names for a Phone Retailer, real food ingredients for a Restaurant, real drug labels for a Pharmacy. Everything is a suggestion you review, edit, and choose to import.
Better still: each imported item is wired to a category, and each category is wired to three GL accounts (Income, Inventory Asset, COG). So the moment you import "iPhone 15 128GB Black" under "Smartphones", its income posts to Smartphones Income Account, its cost posts to Smartphones COG, and its stock value sits in Smartphones Inventory Asset — all automatically. Any category you're missing gets auto-created on the fly with those three linked accounts, so you can jump straight here without first running the Item Categories AI tool.
What the AI proposes (and what it doesn't)
Does propose: Item name, category, base unit of measure (Piece / Bottle /
Kg / Litre / Sachet / Tablet …), pack-size label, and a pack hierarchy —
every purchase / storage / sale pack the item comes in with its unit-count
factor. So a Beverage typically imports with three ItemPackage rows:
Bottle × 1 (base), 6-Pack × 6, Case × 24. A pharmacy tablet typically
imports as Tablet × 1 · Blister × 10 · Box × 100. A phone imports as
Piece × 1 only. The Packaging column in the review grid shows this
list at a glance. The base unit (× 1) is always present — if the AI
omits it we synthesise one so the item is billable.
Does NOT propose: Barcode, cost, selling price, reorder point. Those stay yours to set — the AI never picks prices (prices change too fast to be safely defaulted) and never invents barcodes (you scan the real one).
Before you start
- You need Inventory Master access (
INVENTORY_MASTER). - Set your Business Type on Setup → Organization — the AI list depends on it.
- Set your Country on the same page — the AI proposes brands actually sold in your country. A Nigerian Restaurant gets "Peak Milk 400g" and "Milo 500g"; a South African Restaurant gets Cadbury and Ceres.
- Optional but recommended: run AI-suggest Item Categories first so your GL accounts are pre-organized the way you want them. If you skip this, missing categories will still be auto-created — just with the AI's naming choices instead of yours.
- Recommended: set a default store under Setup → Preferences → Stock & Inventory so imported items land in the right store without you picking it each time.
Steps
- Go to Products & Services → Inventory.
- Click AI-suggest inventory in the header (top-right, next to New inventory item).
- Business Type + Country are pre-filled from Organization Profile. Change either here for a preview.
- Click Suggest inventory. The AI drafts 30 – 60 items across 5 – 10 categories.
- Review the grid — grouped by category:
- Rename any item (double-click a cell). Change its category if you want it under a different bucket.
- Set the unit / pack size to whatever matches how you actually shelve it. The AI defaults are reasonable but yours-to-choose.
- Hover the Why column for a one-line rationale.
- Rows shown at half opacity + "Existing" already exist as an Inventory item — pre-deselected.
- Delete any row you don't want.
- Under the grid, check Stocking department (store) — the store every imported item will be kept in. It starts on your default store if one is set; pick another store if this batch belongs somewhere else.
- When you're happy, click Import N selected. A toast reports: "N items created · M categories created · K GL accounts created · …".
- Head back to Inventory — your new items are grouped by category, ready for you to add barcodes, costs, and selling prices via the normal edit page. Every item's Income / Expenses / Inventory Asset accounts are already populated from its category's defaults.
Tips
- The rationale the AI writes becomes the item's Sales Description (truncated to 150 characters). Change it in the grid if you want something more customer-facing.
- The AI works best when you've been specific about your business type — "Phone Retail" gives you real phone models; "Retail" gives you generic categories. Change the Business Type on Organization Profile if you find yourself getting fuzzy results.
- Safe to re-run. Rows whose item name already exists are silently skipped. Existing categories are re-used, not duplicated. Existing GL accounts (from Phase 2 / Phase 3 imports or your own manual work) are re-used too.
- If you want the operator to pick their own defaults, don't use this tool — use the standard New inventory item page. This tool is optimized for bulk starter setup, not for one-off adds.
Common problems
"AI drafting isn't configured on this server (no OpenAI key)." Site is running without an OpenAI key. Ask your systems administrator. Until it's set, use the standard New inventory item button.
The Suggest button is disabled. You need a Business Type. Type one in the picker on this page, or set one on Organization Profile so it defaults.
"AccountType 'Goods Sold Cost Acc' is missing from this tenant's AccountType master". Extremely old tenant whose AccountType seeding never completed. Ask your systems administrator to run the tenant health check. Individual item creation from the New inventory item button still works — it just won't auto-derive account defaults from a category either.
A row failed to import. The reason is captured in the toast and server log. The row stays in the review grid for a retry. The item's category (and its three linked GL accounts) may already exist by then — harmless; the second attempt reuses them.
Imported items have no stocking department. No store was picked under the grid and no default store is set. Set one on Setup → Preferences → Stock & Inventory for future imports, and choose the store on each existing item's Stocking tab.
The proposed brands aren't sold in my country. Correct the Country field on Organization Profile (or on this page), then re-fetch. If your country is listed but the AI still proposes wrong brands, edit the item names in the grid before importing.
I imported the wrong set. Nothing is destructive. Use the standard Inventory list to delete unwanted items. The auto-created categories and GL accounts stay behind (harmless — no ledger entries) or can be deleted individually from Item Categories and Chart of Accounts.