BusinessSensor can propose a starter Item Category list shaped to your business — Smartphones · Chargers · Cases for a Phone Retailer, Food Ingredients · Beverages · Alcohol for a Restaurant, Analgesics · Antibiotics · Vitamins for a Pharmacy.
Even better: for every category you import, three linked GL accounts are created and wired to the category's defaults automatically. So the moment you add a new item under "Smartphones", its Income, Inventory Asset and Cost of Goods Sold accounts are already selected — you don't have to touch the Chart of Accounts again.
What gets created per category
For a category named Smartphones, the import creates:
| Purpose | Account name | AccountType | Wired into |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales income | Smartphones Income Account |
Income | Default Income Account (category) |
| Inventory on hand | Smartphones Inventory Asset |
CurrentAsset | Default Inventory Asset Account (category) |
| Cost of goods sold | Smartphones COG |
Goods Sold Cost Acc | Default COG Account (category) |
If an account with the same name + type already exists (e.g. you ran the import twice, or created "Smartphones Income Account" by hand earlier), the existing account is reused — never duplicated.
Before you start
- You need Inventory Master access (
INVENTORY_MASTER). - Set your Business Type on Setup → Organization — the AI list depends on it. A Phone Retailer, a Restaurant, and a Clinic will get very different category lists.
- Set your Country on the same page — the AI adds country-typical categories where relevant (e.g. "Airtime And Data", "Bill Payments" for Nigerian POS Agents).
- Nothing is created until you click Import. You can safely try different Business Types before deciding.
Steps
- Go to Products & Services → Item Categories (or use the Item Categories menu directly).
- Click AI-suggest categories in the header (top-right, next to New category).
- Your Business Type + Country are pre-filled from Organization Profile. Change either here for a preview without saving to Organization.
- Click Suggest categories. The AI drafts 15 – 30 categories.
- Review the grid:
- Rename any category (double-click a cell to edit).
- Re-code the short 2-4-character Code if you want your own numbering.
- Hover the Why column for a one-line rationale.
- Rows shown at half opacity + "Existing" already exist in your Item Categories — pre-deselected. Tick them back in only if you want a second category with the same name (rare — usually you don't).
- Delete any row you don't want (row-level Delete icon).
- When you're happy, click Import N selected. You'll see a toast: "Import finished: N categories created · 3N GL accounts created · … ".
- Go back to Item Categories — your new categories are there, each with its three Default GL account columns already populated.
Tips
- Who can use a new category. It is open to the Administrator group and to every role that already has every category. A role limited to some categories does not get it: tick it for that role in Setup → Security Groups, or its staff will not see the new items when they sell or buy.
- The rationale you see in the review grid becomes the imported category's Category Description. Change it in the grid if you want something different from what the AI wrote.
- Prefer specific labels ("Smartphones", "Feature Phones", "Chargers") over generic ones ("Electronics") — the whole point of separate categories is separate GL accounts, so you can see the profitability of each line on your income statement.
- You can safely re-run later if you add products in new areas. Existing categories are silently skipped, and existing GL accounts are silently reused.
- Even if you already have a fully-populated Item Categories list, this page is useful as a gap check — run it, look at what came back with "Existing" flags cleared, and see what buckets you might have missed.
Common problems
"AI drafting isn't configured on this server (no OpenAI key)." Site is running without an OpenAI key. Contact your systems administrator. Until it's set, use the standard New category button on Item Categories.
The Suggest button is disabled. You need a Business Type. Type one in the picker on this page (any text is fine), or set one on Organization Profile so it defaults.
"AccountType 'Goods Sold Cost Acc' is missing from this tenant's AccountType master". This is an extremely old tenant whose AccountType seeding never completed. Ask your systems administrator to run the tenant health check; the AI import can't create the linked COG account without the master row. Individual category creation from the New category button still works — it just won't auto-create the three default accounts either.
A row failed to import. The row's reason is captured in the toast and in the server log. The row stays in the review grid for a retry. Categories are all-or-nothing per-row — if the category insert failed, its three linked GL accounts are still there (harmless — you can delete them from Chart of Accounts, or leave them; a manual second attempt will reuse them).
I imported the wrong set. Nothing is destructive but re-running won't undo — use the standard Item Categories list to delete unwanted categories. The three linked GL accounts stay behind (they hold no ledger entries) — you can leave them or delete them from Chart of Accounts individually.