Choosing an Item Type
If you are looking for where to turn on serial number or batch tracking for an item, it is not a switch on the item. It is the sub item type, chosen on the create screen beside the item type, and the edit screen will not let you change either afterwards. Get them right and every document behaves. Get them wrong and the usual remedy is a new item code. (A Doc Item import of the same code does rewrite both, with no checks at all — Editing an item explains when that is safe.)
This guide shows what each choice does once a document is finalised — to stock, to cost and to the journal — so you can decide before you save. It takes about ten minutes.
The choice runs across three pages:
- Choose the item type from the table on this page; what the type actually controls says why it matters.
- Bundle or Grouped Item? — the choice people get wrong, with GadgetSphere’s back-to-school pack set up both ways — on Bundle or Grouped Item.
- Step 2: choose the sub item type, which is where serial number and batch tracking are turned on — on Tracking and the Final Check.
- Step 3: check yourself before you save.
- What a wrong type touches elsewhere once documents start using it — on this page.
Meet GadgetSphere
GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd sells smartphones and laptops (serialised), accessories (plain quantity), extended warranties, gift vouchers and delivery. For the school holidays it also wants a back-to-school pack: an ultraportable laptop, a sleeve and a wireless mouse at one price. That pack is the example in this guide, worked through on Bundle or Grouped Item, because it can be set up two ways that look alike on the item screen and behave differently on every invoice.
What the type actually controls
The screen shows you the tabs. Everything else the type decides happens later, when a document carrying the item is finalised: BigLedger queues a chain of background steps (see what happens when you press Finalise), and the stock step reads the item’s type at that moment to decide what the line does.
- Whether the line moves stock. Only a Basic Item (and an Alias) moves stock, plus a Voucher whose sub item type is Serial Number. A Bundle moves stock through its parts, which BigLedger adds as lines of their own. On a sales invoice a Grouped Item never reaches the document at all — its variants do. Service, Account Code, Warranty, Membership and the rest move nothing.
- Whether the line gets a cost. The cost of every unit that leaves stock is written back onto the document line it left on. A line that moved no stock carries no cost. No sales document posts a cost-of-sales line; Month End Processing works that out for the month.
- Which account the line posts to. Every line posts its own amount, to the line’s GL code if it has one, otherwise to the account the item’s company link gives for the transaction, otherwise to the company default. An Account Code item exists to carry that GL code itself.
- Whether the finalise check counts stock. Where your company has the stock check on, it looks at Basic Item, Bundle, Made to Order and NSTI lines only.
- Which tabs appear on the item. A Basic Item has a Stock Card; a Service does not. A Bundle has Bundle Config, a Grouped Item has Child Item, a Made-to-Order item gets configuration tabs nothing else has.
Upstream, a type depends on what the create screen asks for first — the code, the base unit and the currency. A Basic Item also gets an inventory item record of its own, the one the Inventory Item Maintenance applet shows; stock balances and costs hang off that record, not off the item you created.
The types you will actually use
| If the thing you are selling is… | Use | What happens at finalise |
|---|---|---|
| A physical product you hold in stock | Basic Item | Stock leaves the line’s location, and its cost is written back onto the line. The only type with a Stock Card |
| The same product in several variants — colours, sizes, capacities | Grouped Item | Nothing of its own. Picking it on an invoice puts one ordinary line per variant you give a quantity to |
| Several different products sold together at one price | Bundle | The pack line keeps the price. BigLedger adds one line per part under it, carrying quantity and no money; stock and cost go on those |
| Labour, a fee, anything not held in stock | Service | Revenue only — no stock, no cost on the line |
| A shipping or delivery charge | Delivery Charge | Revenue only; gets its own configuration tab |
| A non-stock cost you want to post straight to an account | Account Code | The item is a GL account; give it the GL code |
| A gift voucher | Voucher | With Serial Number, each voucher is counted in and out like stock, and shows up in Voucher Management |
| An extended warranty sold against products | Warranty | Sold against eligible categories, items or pricing bands |
| A membership plan | Membership | Carries attributes, a dues schedule and expiry |
| Something assembled to the customer’s specification | Made to Order | Enables the configuration and add-on tabs |
| A downloadable or electronically delivered product | Digital Goods | Non-physical |
| A company asset you are tracking | Fixed Asset Register | Carries an asset category and type |
| A contract-based sale | Sales Contract | Links to a sales contract template |
| A trade-in with no stock behind it | NSTI | Non-stock trade-in |
There are a handful more — group discounts, currency, aliases, member-point discounts and external catalogue items — used by POS promotions, multi-currency working and marketplace catalogues. You will meet them if you need them.
What a wrong type touches elsewhere
Nothing breaks the day a type is chosen wrong, which is exactly the danger. The cost lands later, in other people’s work:
- A physical product typed as Service or Account Code sells and finalises cleanly and never moves stock. It is missing from the Stock Balance applet, a stock take has nothing to count it against, and its sale lines carry no cost, so a margin read by item shows the whole selling price as profit.
- A type rewritten later by a Doc Item import changes what documents do from then on. The stock step reads the item’s type when each document is finalised, so documents finalised earlier keep exactly what they did, or did not do. A Service retyped as a Basic Item starts selling out of a balance no receipt ever built (Editing an item says when an import rewrite is safe).
- A pack set up as a Grouped Item sells at the parts’ total, and the pack discount becomes a manual step at every till and on every invoice.
Nobody is warned of any of these. Finding them is a person’s job, and a quick one: once a month, the stock controller filters the item listing by Item Type — Service, then Account Code — and reads the names. Anything that sounds like a box on a shelf is a candidate for a replacement code. They have got it right when the list holds only labour, fees, charges and accounts.
What success looks like
Two minutes on the item you just created:
- Open it for editing. The tabs you expect for that type are present — a Stock Card on a Basic Item, Bundle Config on a bundle, nothing stock-related on a Service.
- Add it to a draft sales invoice line. A bundle shows one line that opens onto its parts; a grouped item asks for a quantity against each variant and adds one line per variant; a serialised item asks for serials. Discard the draft.
- On the Main tab, Inv Item Code is populated for a Basic Item.
For a bundle, run one more check after its first real sale: open the finalised invoice. Under the pack line you see its parts, each with a quantity and no money. If they are not there, the stock step has not run on that invoice yet, or has failed.
Common mistakes
| What goes wrong | What you see | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong item type chosen | It cannot be changed on the edit screen | Retire the item, create a replacement. Decide before you save |
| A Service item expected to appear in stock reports | It never does | Services have no inventory tracking; that is the point of the type |
| An Account Code item with no GL code | Documents still post, but not where you meant: the line falls back to the company default sales or purchase code, so the cost lands in purchases rather than its own account — and with no default either, the line is left out and the customer’s or supplier’s line absorbs it, with no error | Set the GL code on the Main tab; for this type it is required in practice |
| A type missing from the dropdown | Looks like it does not exist | An administrator has restricted the available types |
The mistakes that belong to one part are on that part’s page: a Grouped Item used where a Bundle was meant, a bundle showing zero stock, a margin report showing a bundle at 100% margin, a pack price that changed by itself and a part missing from the pack on Bundle or Grouped Item; everything serialised “to be safe” on Tracking and the Final Check.