Learn how to group your products and services in QuickBooks Online.
Get helpful insights into your sales and inventory when you run reports. Group your products and services into categories to keep things organized. We’ll show you how.
Create a category
Use categories to group items of the same type. If you want to be more specific with grouping items, you can also create sub-categories.
- Go to Get paid & pay or Sales, then select Products and services (Take me there).
- Select the dropdown More ▼, then Manage categories.
- Select New category, then enter the name of the category.
Note: If you need a create a sub-category, select Is a sub-category checkbox and the main category. - Select Save.
Categorize the products and services you sell
Add a new product or service to a category
You can select a category when you add a new inventory product, service, or non-inventory product.
Add an existing product or service to a category
If you have an uncategorized item, here’s how to add it to a category.
- Go to Get paid & pay or Sales, then select Products and services (Take me there).
- Find the product or service you want to categorize.
- Select Edit from the Action column.
- Select the Category ▼ dropdown, then select one that fits this item. Or select + Add new to create a new one.
- Select Save and close.
Use categories in transactions
If you buy and sell many different things, you can use categories to easily find products or services.
Want your categories to show on forms like invoices and sales receipts? Learn how to customize the forms you send to customers.
How categories help you with reporting
When you run sales or inventory reports, products and services are grouped in a way that makes sense to you.
You can expand or collapse each category. This makes it easy to digest what’s in the report. And you can quickly find details of specific items.
This way of grouping also gives you a clearer picture of your sales. It’s easy to see what types of services are popular. And the total for each category helps you know where the bulk of sales comes from.
Edit or remove a category
- Go to Get paid & pay or Sales, then select Products and services (Take me there).
- Select the dropdown More ▼, then Manage categories.
- Select Edit from the Action column.
- Make the changes you want and select Save. Or select Remove, then OK.
Focus on your business, not your books.
Get a dedicated team of QuickBooks-certified bookkeepers to set up your Products and Services and categorize all your transactions for you. Learn more about QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping.
