Maintaining the Item Master

This is the record every document line in BigLedger points at. Get it right once and sales, purchasing, POS, e-commerce and e-Invoice all behave; get one field wrong and the failure surfaces weeks later in somebody else’s screen. This page is about maintaining that record — what each part of it feeds, and which fields you cannot change afterwards.

Despite the name, this has nothing to do with document management. “Doc item” means an item a document line can pick. There is no SOP library, contract repository or file archive here — this is the item master.

The two records, again

Every tradeable item has two: the document item here — the commercial definition — and the inventory item in Inventory Item Maintenance, which is the stock-keeping record that ledgers, serial numbers and costing layers hang off.

Create items here. When you create a Basic Item, BigLedger creates the matching inventory record and links the two for you. Creating one on the inventory side leaves it unlinked and unusable on documents.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd carries about 5,200 SKUs across three companies and 22 branches, sells online as well as in store, and issues Malaysian e-Invoices on every sale. Today we are setting up a new flagship smartphone properly, first time.

Before you start

Your tax codes exist in the Tax Configuration applet.
Your GL codes exist in the Chart of Account applet, if items in this category carry one.
Your categories and category groups exist, or you are ready to create them.
You know the item’s type. It is immutable after save.

Step 1: Create the item, and get the immutable fields right

Doc Item Maintenance > Items > Create

The fields that matter most on this screen are the ones you cannot take back:

Field	Can you change it later?
Item Code	No — unless your company has enabled editing it
Item Type	No
Sub Item Type (quantity tracking)	Only if your company has enabled editing it
Item Name, description, remarks	Yes, any time

So slow down on those three. An item created with the wrong type has to be made obsolete and replaced.

Also set:

Base UOM — the unit stock is counted in. Defaults to PCS. Alternative units come later.
Currency — defaults to MYR.
Inventory — leave it ticked for anything stock-tracked. Un-ticking it also disables the serialised option.
GL Code — optional in general, but required in practice for account-code items.
EAN Code — the barcode. Your company may make this mandatory.

Codes must be unique among live items. A duplicate is refused. A code belonging to a deleted item can be reused.

Step 2: Set the tax codes

Item Edit > Tax tab

Tick Tax applicable, then set the input tax code (what you pay when you buy it) and the output tax code (what you charge when you sell it). The rate comes from the code — you do not type it. Withholding-tax codes have their own fields on the same tab.

Getting this wrong is expensive and quiet: the item posts to the wrong tax account on every document until somebody notices at a filing deadline.

Step 3: Fill in the e-Invoice tab — before the item is ever sold

Item Edit > E-Invoice tab

Three fields, all needed for a Malaysian e-Invoice submission:

Item Classification — the LHDN classification code, chosen from the synchronised Classifications list.
Taxable Type Code — the LHDN tax type.
E-Invoice UOM — the LHDN unit-of-measure code, which is not the same vocabulary as your base UOM.

Your tenant has defaults for all three. They are a safety net, not a plan: an item classified by default is an item classified as something generic.

This is the field people fill in last and regret. An item with no classification does not stop you selling it — it stops the e-Invoice going through, which happens after the sale, in a different applet, to somebody else. Set it when you create the item.

Step 4: Add alternative units

Item Edit > Multi UOM tab

Each alternative unit takes a UOM, a ratio to the base unit, a status, an optional sort code (order them smallest first — 001 upward), its own EAN code if you scan it, and its own e-Invoice UOM.

A box of 20 has a ratio of 20. Get it right the first time; everything ever counted in that unit depends on it.

Step 5: Categorise it, price it, and say where it lives

Category and Label tabs — the aisles. Price-book rules match on these, so an uncategorised item silently misses every category-based promotion.
Pricing Scheme tab — the price lists this item appears in. Schemes themselves are maintained under the Pricing Schemes menu; the prices are entered per item.
Entity Pricing tab — a specific price for a specific customer or supplier. For many at once, use the Entity Pricing Import.
Branch and company linking — which of GadgetSphere’s three companies and 22 branches can use this item.
Dimension tab — height, length, width, weight, for shipping and delivery planning.
Marketplace tab — the marketplace listings this item is tied to.

Step 6: When it is not one item but two thousand

Four bulk tools sit in the left menu, and they are worth learning before you need them:

Import Item — CSV import of items with their links, pricing and categories.
Export Item — CSV export of pricing, GL codes and company, branch and label links. Export first, edit, re-import: that is the safe way to do a bulk change.
Item Price Change — a bulk price change across many items.
Item Image File Import — bulk image upload.
Item Templates — templates that pre-fill new items, for when you add the same shape of product repeatedly.

Retiring an item

Items are not really deleted; their status is what you change:

Status	What it means
Active	Selectable on new documents
Inactive	Kept for history, not offered on new documents
Obsolete	Discontinued
Temp	Parked, mid-creation
Deleted	Soft-deleted; the code becomes reusable

Use Inactive or Obsolete for anything that has ever been on a document. History depends on the record still existing.

What success looks like

Three checks on the item you just created, two minutes:

Raise a draft sales invoice line for it. The item is findable, the price fills in from its pricing scheme, and the tax is calculated.
On the item’s Main tab, Inv Item Code is populated — the inventory twin exists and is linked.
On the E-Invoice tab, the classification, taxable type and UOM are set to something specific rather than left on the tenant default.

If all three pass, the item will not surprise anyone downstream.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong	What you see	The fix
Wrong Item Type at creation	It cannot be changed	Make it obsolete and create a replacement; check the type before saving
E-Invoice tab left on defaults	Sales work; e-Invoice submissions fail or are misclassified	Set classification, taxable type and e-Invoice UOM when you create the item
No tax code on the item	Documents post with no tax, or the wrong tax	Set input and output codes on the Tax tab
No category	Category-based price rules never match, silently	Set the Category tab; see designing pricing rules
Item not linked to the branch or company that needs it	Staff cannot find it when raising a document	Check branch and company linking
Wrong Multi UOM ratio	Quantities wrong in the unit nobody uses daily, discovered months later	Verify the ratio before the first bulk transaction in that unit
Bulk-editing item by item	Days of clicking	Export, edit the CSV, re-import; or use Item Price Change
Deleting an item that has history	Documents lose their reference	Set it to Inactive or Obsolete instead