Organizing Your Price List Categories

Categories nest (Auto Glass › NAGS Glass, HVAC › Filters › Pleated) and can be reordered, renamed, merged and retired without breaking anything already sold. Let AI draft the tree and sort your items, add tile pictures for the visual estimate builder, and design a tree your team will actually use.

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Organizing Your Price List Categories

Price list categories do quiet but important work. They decide:

  • what your team sees when searching for an item on an estimate, and how quickly they find it;
  • how your reports group sales: "how much did we sell in filters last quarter?" only has an answer if filters live together;
  • which items a guided workflow offers. Auto Glass, for example, only searches the categories you choose, so a technician looking for a gel pad doesn't wade through 3,000 flat-glass items;
  • what the visual estimate builder shows. On a tablet, each category is a big picture tile your crew taps through.

Categories can nest. Auto Glass can hold NAGS Glass, NAGS Hardware & Kits and Glass Labor & Services. Anything that asks for "this category" includes everything underneath it.

Where to find it

  • The Manage categories link next to Category on the price list;
  • Price List & Inventory → Price List Categories in the Administration menu;
  • the Manage categories button on the Auto Glass settings page.

You'll need the Manage Price List permission.

Designing a tree that works

Two or three levels, not six. Every level is another click for whoever is quoting. A good test: can a new hire find "1-inch pleated filter, 16×25" in under ten seconds?

Organize by how you sell, not by how the vendor catalogs. Your distributor's catalog has 40 top-level categories because it sells everything. You probably need eight.

Keep labor and parts apart. Put labor, service fees and trip charges in their own branch. Reports that separate parts revenue from labor revenue get much simpler.

A worked example for a shop doing HVAC and auto glass:

  • HVAC
    • Equipment
    • Filters
    • Refrigerant
    • Labor & Service Calls
  • Auto Glass
    • NAGS Glass
    • NAGS Hardware & Kits
    • Glass Labor & Services
    • Adhesives & Supplies
  • Fees: trip charges, disposal, after-hours.

Everyday tasks

Add a category. Use Add category for a top-level one, or Add subcategory from the … menu on the category it belongs in.

Move a category. Drag it where it belongs, or use Move from its … menu and Pick the category it should go inside. Its subcategories and items come with it. A category can't go inside itself or one of its own subcategories.

Reorder. Drag, or use Move up / Move down. Sort subcategories A to Z tidies a whole branch at once.

Rename. Renaming changes the name everywhere at once, including on items already sold. Nothing on old invoices breaks, because invoices keep their own copy of each line.

Move items between categories. Select a category on the left to see its items. Tick the ones to move, or Select every item on this page, then Move the selected items to a category. Include subcategories shows items from the whole branch. Moves can be undone from the message that appears.

Let AI draft the tree for you

If your price list grew by import, by three different people over five years, or straight from a vendor catalog, reorganizing it by hand is days of work. Organize with AI at the top of the categories page does the first draft in minutes: it reads your items, suggests a set of categories that fit what you actually sell, and sorts every item into them. Nothing in your price list changes until you've reviewed the suggestion and pressed Apply, and you can undo it afterwards.

It's part of AI Assist. If you don't see the button, AI Assist isn't on for your account.

When to use it

  • A flat list. Everything sits in "Parts", "Misc" and "No category".
  • A vendor-shaped list. Forty categories named after a distributor's catalog, most holding three items.
  • Before turning on the visual estimate builder. The builder is only as good as your categories.

It's the wrong tool for a list that's already mostly right. Moving a few items by hand is faster than reviewing a whole new tree.

How it works

  1. Pick how deep it should go. One level gives main categories only (Parts, Labor, Rentals). Two levels adds subcategories and suits most price lists. Three levels is for big catalogs with many kinds of items. Start with two. You can always add a level by hand later, and a tree that's too deep slows down quoting.
  2. AI reads your list and suggests categories. This takes about a minute. It looks at each item's name, type, brand and current category, and reuses your existing category names where they fit. It doesn't see customers, prices or sales.
  3. It sorts every item. A progress bar shows how far it's got. Keep the page open. If you leave, it stops and picks up where it left off the next time you open Organize with AI.
  4. You review. You see the suggested tree with item counts, and each category's items alongside where they are now. Rename or remove a category, move items to a better place, or tick items and choose Leave where they are. Items AI couldn't place are listed under Staying where they are. Look through them: they're usually the odd ones that need a home.
  5. Apply. Categories you already have are reused rather than duplicated, so their pictures, builder settings and import matching carry over. Suggested categories with no items aren't created. Tick Retire the old categories this leaves empty (on by default) to tidy up. Retired categories stay on old invoices and reports, and you can restore them.

What it costs

Each run uses AI credits: one for the suggestion, plus one for every 250 items sorted. A 1,000-item price list uses about 5. The exact number is shown before you start. One run can handle up to 20,000 items.

Undo

For 7 days after applying, the categories page shows a note with Undo. It puts every item back where it was and your categories back how they were. Items you've moved yourself since then stay where you put them. Starting a new AI suggestion ends the chance to undo the previous one.

Pictures for the visual estimate builder

Pick a category and use Add picture to give it a tile picture. The picture appears on that category's button in the visual estimate builder, and as a small thumbnail in your category list. Change picture replaces it and Remove takes it off; without a picture, the tile shows the category's initials.

Use a clear, square photo of a typical item: a fuel pump for Fuel System, a can of antifouling for Bottom Paint. Twelve tiles of near-identical grey photos defeat the point. Pictures can be JPG, PNG, GIF or WebP, up to 5 MB.

No photos to hand? Pictures with AI at the top of the page draws a matching set for your category tiles, your items, or both, and Make with AI next to a category's picture draws one in the same look. See Drawing pictures for your price list with AI.

Retiring and merging

Retire a category you no longer use. If it still has items, you're asked where they should go first (Move items and retire), so no item is left without a category. Retired categories disappear from lists and searches but stay on record. Turn on Show retired to see them and Restore one.

Merge two categories that mean the same thing ("Filters" and "Air Filters"). Pick the one to keep, and the other's items and subcategories move into it.

Retire, move and merge all offer Undo for a few seconds afterwards. Use it; that's what it's for.

Names must be unique

Two categories that are both in use can't share a name, not even in different branches. That sounds strict, but price list imports match categories by name. With two "Filters" categories, a vendor price list import can't tell which one you meant. So you'll need "HVAC Filters" and "Pool Filters", not two "Filters".

Retired categories don't count, so you can retire "Filters" and create a new "Filters" elsewhere.

Common mistakes

Building the tree to match a vendor catalog. You'll end up with categories nobody uses and quoting will slow down. Start small and add a category only when someone actually asks "where do I put this?"

Deleting instead of retiring. There's no delete, on purpose. Items sold under a category are part of your sales history. Retire it and move its items.

Putting labor inside every product branch. "Labor" under HVAC, again under Plumbing, and again under Glass means three labor categories to maintain and reports that can't add them up. One Labor & Service branch, with subcategories if you need them, works better.

Applying an AI suggestion without looking at "Staying where they are". Those are the items AI couldn't place. Leave them and they keep their old category, which may be the one you were trying to get rid of. Give each one a home before you apply.

Re-importing a vendor price book after reorganizing. Updating items from a vendor price book puts them back in the vendor's category, whether you moved them by hand or with AI. Tick Exclude from Import Updates on those items, or re-file them after each import. Excluded items also stop getting the vendor's price changes, so use it with care.

Retiring a category the visual builder opens with. The builder's opening tiles are chosen per job type in Estimates & Proposals. After a big reorganization, check that list still points at the categories you want.

Forgetting the workflow search settings. If Auto Glass should offer a new category's items on the estimate, add it under Your own parts and services that show in the estimate search in Auto Glass settings. Anything you add under a category that's already chosen is included automatically.

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