Maintaining the Item Master

“Where do I turn on serial number or batch tracking for an item?” On the item’s create screen, in Sub Item Type (Choosing an item type, Step 2), before its first save — and that answer is the shape of this whole page, because the first save also fixes the item’s type and, unless code editing is switched on, its code. This guide walks one new product through Doc Item Maintenance from blank to first sale, then follows a mistake found after that sale, so you know which of the item’s fields reach documents already raised and which do not. Allow 20 minutes for the first item; the second takes five.

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 item runs across three pages, in this order:

Step 1: create the item, and get the locked fields right — on this page.
Step 2: set the tax codes — on this page.
Step 3: fill in the e-Invoice tab before the item is ever sold, and know what a correction after the first sale reaches — on The E-Invoice Tab.
Step 4: add alternative units — on Units, Prices and Retiring.
Step 5: categorise it, price it, and say where it lives.
Step 6: the five menus that deal in many items at once.
Retiring an item: the status that keeps an item for history and stops offering it on new documents, and why Delete refuses.

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 a second or two later, on a queue, and links the two. An item created in Inventory Item Maintenance alone has no document item, so it cannot be put on any document, not a sales order and not a purchase invoice: it appears in stock reports and nowhere else, which makes the fault hard to spot.

Starting on the inventory side and creating the document item afterwards works for stock, but leaves the link written on this side only, so a status you set here later never reaches the inventory record (which record owns which fact).

The split decides who in your business owns what. The person who sets prices, tax codes and the e-Invoice tab works here; the person who counts stock works in the inventory applet. A few facts — code, name, type, tracking, EAN — are copied once from this record to its twin when the twin is created and drift apart after that. The one that bites is the barcode: the till scans the EAN on this record, while a stock take scans the twin’s.

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. Its retail branches report walk-in sales to LHDN monthly in consolidated e-Invoices; GadgetSphere Distribution (GSD) invoices corporate buyers one e-Invoice per invoice.

Today the merchandising team is adding a new 14-inch ultraportable laptop, code LAP-ULT-1401. It is sold one at a time at the branches and by the carton of five to corporate buyers, and every unit carries a serial number for warranty. You will set it up here, sell 20 to a corporate buyer through GSD, and then find out on Thursday that the e-Invoice classification was picked one row off.

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. Each category slot has to be bound to a group in Application Settings before its drop-down shows anything.
You know the item’s type and how it is tracked — plain quantity, batch or serial number. The edit screen locks both at the first save, and Step 1 explains why that comes sooner than you expect.
Somebody who owns e-Invoice compliance knows which LHDN classification this product takes. That is a decision about your business, not a field you fill in on the way past; if the person creating the item is not that person, get the answer before Step 3.

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

Doc Item Maintenance > Items > Create

The fields that matter most on this screen are the ones you cannot take back. Until its first save the item is a TEMP draft, and that save is the line:

Item Type and Sub Item Type (how quantity is tracked) can be changed only while the item is TEMP. After the first save the screen locks both and the save ignores any change to them, and no permission unlocks them.
Item Code locks the same way, unless the applet setting EDIT_ITEM_CODE is switched on — one switch for the whole tenant, not per company or per user. Even then, a changed code does not follow the item into history: every document line stores its own copy of the code, so lines raised before the change still show the old one.
Item Name, description and remarks stay editable for as long as the item exists.

The first save may not be a button you press. Where your tenant’s create screen opens a draft (the applet setting ENABLE_TEMP_FEATURE), the screen saves the item by itself, 300 milliseconds after code, name, type, base UOM and currency — and Sub Item Type, where the screen shows it — all hold a value. It does not wait for you to finish the tab. Without that setting, the classic create form writes the item as ACTIVE the moment you press Create. Either way, fill Sub Item Type and Item Type first and code last, and check both before the last of those fields is filled.

For LAP-ULT-1401 that means Item Type Basic Item and Sub Item Type serial number before anything else. Scenario 005 in our support record is a phone set up as plain quantity and found out at a warranty claim six months later, with two hundred sales behind it that named no handset. The lock is protecting that history: switching tracking on afterwards would make two hundred past movements look as though they should have carried serial numbers nobody recorded. The fix in that case is a new item code with the right tracking, and the old one retired.

Serialise deliberately: every receipt, sale, transfer and count of a serialised item has to name its serials, which is right for a RM 4,000 laptop and wrong for a RM 12 cable.

An item created with the wrong type has to be retired and replaced — unless nothing has used it yet, when a Doc Item import of the same code can rewrite the type. The import checks nothing, and it rewrites the rest of the row too (Editing an item › What the edit screen will not let you change).

Also set:

Base UOM — the unit stock is counted in. Defaults to PCS. Alternative units come later.
Currency — defaults to MYR. An item with none does not save: Please select currency.
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. When this item is added to a sales invoice, purchase invoice or POS line, the applet copies this code onto the line, where it outranks the per-company GL link (why).
EAN Code — the barcode the till scans. 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. The code is what everybody will search by for years, so agree a convention before the first item.

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.

The tick is a gate, not a label. With it off, none of the codes is copied onto a document line, however correct the tab looks. A filled-in code with the tick off is the combination to look for when an invoice comes out untaxed.

The code is copied onto each document line when the line is added, and the line keeps its own copy of the code from then on. So a corrected tax code reaches the next line anybody adds, and leaves every line already on a document — draft or final — as it was. Getting it wrong is expensive and quiet: the item posts to the wrong tax account on every document until somebody notices at a filing deadline, and the repair is on those documents, not on the item.

What success looks like

Four checks on the item you just created, two minutes, once it has been through every part — the e-Invoice tab and the pricing included:

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. In the item search, its E-invoice Item Classification column shows the code your compliance owner chose.
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 and UOM are the ones you chose — not 022 Others pre-filled by the tab. The taxable type is worth checking here too, but it is not the field that decides what LHDN is told: submit one line and read the taxable type on the submitted record instead.
On the Main tab, Sub Item Type reads the tracking you meant. It is greyed out by now; if it is wrong, this is the cheapest moment you will ever have to replace the item.

If all four pass, the item will not surprise anyone downstream. Delete the draft invoice afterwards — its line holds a copy of today’s values.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong	What you see	The fix
Wrong Item Type at creation	It cannot be changed on the edit screen	Retire it and create a replacement; check the type before the last of code, name, type, UOM and currency is filled
Wrong tracking (Sub Item Type)	Greyed out on the first day; found months later at a warranty claim or a stock take	A new item code with the right tracking; move the stock across and retire the old one
Serialising by default	Every receipt, sale and count now asks for serial numbers	Serialise only what has a unit identity: a phone or a laptop, not a cable
Created in Inventory Item Maintenance	It is in stock reports but cannot be picked on a document line	Create items in Doc Item Maintenance
No currency on the create form	Please select currency, and the item does not save	Set the currency; it defaults to `MYR`
A code chosen carelessly	Locked, and unreadable for years	Agree a convention before the first item
No tax code on the item, or the tick off	Documents post with no tax, or the wrong tax	Set the codes and the Tax applicable tick; correct documents already raised on the documents themselves

The mistakes that belong to one part are on that part’s page: a blank E-Invoice tab and a classification corrected after the first sales on The E-Invoice Tab; a missing category, an item not linked to the branch or company that needs it, a wrong Multi UOM ratio, re-uploading an edited Doc Item file and pressing Delete on an item with history on Units, Prices and Retiring.