In A2X we provide different options for the grouping of Sales, Refunds, Promotions, Shipping and Giftwrap charges. The one we will discuss in this article is Grouping by Product Type option.
We’d like to say upfront that product types are generally an 'extra-for-experts' setting that not all users are going to want or need. They let you group many different SKUs into single line items for special accounting or tax treatment.
Let’s say we sell two brands of T-Shirt: ‘COOL’ and ‘FUNKY’ with the following SKUs for different sizes and colors:
COOL-TSHIRT-BLUE-S
COOL-TSHIRT-BLUE-M
COOL-TSHIRT-BLUE-L
COOL-TSHIRT-BLUE-XL
FUN-TSHIRT-BLUE-S
FUN-TSHIRT-BLUE-M
FUN-TSHIRT-BLUE-L
FUN-TSHIRT-BLUE-X
Let’s assume we have 100’s of different sizes and colors, but we need to track them by brand, perhaps for tax reasons or for accounting reasons – for example we split brand sales in our profit and loss reporting.
Using grouping by product types in A2X
There are two steps that need to be completed in order to use product types grouping in A2X.
STEP 1. Add Product Types
Log in to your A2X account, go to 'Settings' in the main menu and then select Product Types as shown below.
Once you open the 'Product Types' menu you can input our product type info:
define a Product type name – we might use our brands to continue our example from above: ‘COOL’ or ‘FUNKY’.
in the second box, we can list all the SKUs separated by a comma and click on “Add Product Type”. Then repeat the same procedure to add any other Product Types (like ‘FUNKY’ from our example)
Using Regular Expression Patterns
Instead of listing every SKU separately, we can also use a regular expression pattern to match all the SKUs of a type.
An example pattern, in this case, would be: COOL.*
Please Note: this regular expression pattern will add anything that starts with ‘COOL’ into this Product Type category.
Regular expression patterns allow us to create special patterns of our SKUs to save maintaining lists as we add/remove SKUs from the catalog.
For example, if we have 20 different colors of T-shirt, we could group all the small sizes together using a pattern like “TSHRT-.-S” (where the “.” means match anything in the middle). More information about regular expression patterns is available HERE, if interested – using patterns is useful for very advanced cases.
When we are finished adding product types, we will see all of them listed under “Current Product Types”
If we need to add SKUs or patterns to a certain Product Type, we can do so by clicking on the “Edit” button beside it, or we can delete the entire Product Type by clicking on the “Delete” button.
STEP 2. Enable the ‘Group by Product Type’ invoice setting
Once we are finished adding Product Types, we can move to the menu on the left and click on “Invoice Settings”.
Choose the option “Group by product type” and click on the “Update Invoice Settings” button.
Please note, that once we change the A2X invoice setting, we need to refresh each settlement we wish to post to reflect the new calculations.
In our example of the two ‘COOL’ and ‘FUNKY’ Product Types we added, the sales on the invoices that A2X generates will be displayed as follows:
Sales – COOL
Sales – FUNKY
Sales – All other products
Why would we want to do this?
There are lots of different scenarios, and your financial adviser or tax adviser can help you choose if and when this setting is appropriate. One example where A2X users use this option is baby products in the UK. They are VAT exempt, so they get pulled out and accounted for differently on the invoices.
Some users also use this option to track broad categories of products in their P&L reporting for management.
The “Group by Product Type” option works really well if you have consistent formatting in your SKUs or a SKU list that’s not changing too often.
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