Adding a category to the inventory directory

In the following example, we use the Corefile demo store “coredemo”, to create web store categories, and add an item. For an overview of the login process, see: Logging in to the Corefile control console.

Inventory activity button
Click “Inventory” from the top row of activity buttons. This will display your “directory” of inventory categories and items. Currently this will be empty except for the common top-level category called “Inventory Items”. All new categories and items are placed under the "Inventory Items" folder. Just like the directory on a computer disc drive, you can create inventory categories (folders) and inventory items (files) inside your Corefile inventory directory.

Categories store other categories or a list of items
There is one difference between how folders and files are organized on a computer directory and how categories and items are organized in Corefile. Under a Corefile category, you can not mix together categories and items. In other words a category must contain either all categories, or all files. This enforces better organization of your inventory. It is also necessary for maintaining a clean website display for your customers. If you decide that you need to create a new category under a category that already stores items: 1) create the new category/categories in another part of the inventory tree. 2) Drag (all) the items from the original category to the new category/categories. 3) Drag the new category/categories under the original category.

Creating a new category
First select the category in which you want to create your new category. If this is the first category that you are creating, select the top level category: "Inventory Items". Once you have selected a "parent" category, press the menu button on the bottom left corner of the inventory directory, and choose: "New Category". You will then be prompted to enter a category name for the new category that you are about to make. Later, if you wish to change the category name, or properties of the category, select the category, and choose "View/Edit" from the same menu.

Category "Shipping Class", "Local Sales Tax", and "Show in web Store" properties
You may also select a default "Shipping Class". This will becone the default Shipping Class for all other categories and items under this category. Categories or items under this category can change their own default Shipping Class if they need to. This "cascading" approach lets you set a reasonable default shipping class at a high level, so you don't have to set it for each individual item, unless you want to. For example; assume that you have a category called "Books" with sub-categories: "Cook Books" and "Kids Books". If you change the Shipping Class of the "Books" category, you will automatically change the default Shipping Class of all the books in "Cook Books" and "Kids Books". Of course if either "Cook Books" or "Kids Books" used a Shipping Class other than "default", the change would not affect the books in that category. Similarly, you are able to set a Shipping Class for individual inventory items. If the Shipping Class of the item is set to "default", it will use the Shipping Class of the category that it is in. - Otherwise it will use the Shipping Class that was specifically set for it. Therefore, an item uses the Shipping Class that has been set for it. If none is set ("default"), it will check the category that it is in, and use the category's "Shipping Class". If the category's ShippingClass is set to "default" the category will check the category that it is in, and so on, until a Shipping Class is found. The same "cascading" approach is used to determine the local sales tax for an item, and if an item is to appear in the web-store. This last property is a convenient method for blocking the display of a category and all it's items from your web store. For example, if you are a California sports store, you may not want to display the category "Snowboards" in the summer time. This let's you do just that, but not actually remove "Snowboards" from your inventory.