Base Categories are the top-level structure in your Price Books, organising your main product and service lines to mirror your core offerings.

Acting as high-level "houses," these categories encompass all related Sub-Categories, products, and services, enabling streamlined inventory management and efficient provisioning across The Layer.

Price Books contain essential details for every item sold, including pricing, terms, and suppliers, all organised under these Base Categories. By establishing clear Base Categories, you create an intuitive, functional hierarchy that dictates both data visibility and management.

To create a new Base Category in your instance, navigate to Settings. From there, head to Inventory settings and select Product Categories.

This will bring you to the Product Categories page, where you can adjust existing categories or add new ones.

To create a new Base Category, click "New product category" on the left panel.

In the form, enter a name for your new category. If this category is intended to be a Base Category, ensure that the "parent" option is set to "root category", as shown in the example below.

Once you create the new category, you'll be taken to its setup page. Here, you’ll configure important details for the Base Category, including service core fields, product core fields, stock metadata, and quotation builder choices.

In the Service Core Fields section, enable the fields you want to be editable in the service edit screen.

These fields will be visible in the Edit Service window for a Service item accessed in the customer record’s Assets tab, as shown in the example below.

You can also choose which fields will appear in the Grids view; this will be visible in the customer record in the assets tab:

When you select the field to show in the Sales Order, this will be visible in the data capture:

When configuring the Service Core Fields, you can rename each field to use terms familiar to your team. For example, if you typically use “CTN” instead of “MSISDN,” you can set it as such in this section.

You notice the setting applied displayed in the Assets Tab in the Customer Record.

Service custom fields are designed to capture specific information about service assets that will be visible across the board for all users. By promoting fields in this section, they will become standard entries in each service asset associated with this Base Category.

Examples of these custom fields include login details for selected users, account numbers, or usernames.

Product core fields work much like service core fields. However, enabling grid view for a Product Core field will show it in both the asset grid and data capture areas, making key product information more accessible.

Similar to service custom fields, Product Custom Fields apply to each product asset within the Base Category. Configure these to display in product asset records, capturing the unique data relevant to each product.

In the Stock Metadata section, enable fields to capture additional stock details, such as colour or memory size for a handset. These fields will be accessible in the stock movement section and Stock stacks, adding detail and control to stock management.

Also, visible in the Stock Movement Session when booking the stock in.

And Stock stacks, providing additional insights for stock management.

This setting is crucial as it enables your Sales Team to quote products or services from this Base Category while also allowing the Service Team to update existing assets.

In the Quotation Builder settings, choose whether to show services, products, or both based on the tariffs and items in your price book.

In the example below, we have enabled it for both; if you only need to quote services, you can disable products here. This selection will determine which items the sales team can include in quotes.

This is now visible for the sales team to quote.

You can also select the position of Mobile Tariffs within the Assets tab; in this example, we’ve placed them first.

In our example, we want the Mobile Tariffs to show first.

Once set up, you can filter workstack types by Base Category, allowing you to manage:

This setup simplifies asset tracking and management, making it easy to locate and manage categories by type.

If you need any additional assistance with creating a new Base Category, please contact your Layer account manager.