Departments

Departments organize your products into a hierarchical category structure. They are used for browsing products on the POS Terminal, filtering reports, and managing product groupings.

Creating Departments

Navigate to HQ Manager > Departments and click "Add Department". Enter a department name (e.g., "Grocery") and an optional code (e.g., GRO). If this department is a sub-department, select its parent department from the dropdown. Leave the parent blank for top-level departments.

You can create as many levels of nesting as you need. A typical retail structure might look like:

• Grocery
  • Canned Goods
  • Snacks
  • Baking
• Beverages
  • Soft Drinks
  • Juices
  • Water
• Dairy
  • Milk
  • Cheese
  • Yogurt

Assigning Products to Departments

Every product must belong to exactly one department. When creating or editing a product, you select its department from a dropdown that shows the full hierarchy. Products should be assigned to the most specific (leaf) department available. For example, a carton of orange juice should go in "Beverages > Juices" rather than just "Beverages".

Department-based reports aggregate sales from the department and all its children. Viewing the "Beverages" report would include sales from "Soft Drinks", "Juices", and "Water" combined.

Sorting Departments

Departments appear in the POS Terminal's category browser in the order you define. From the department list in HQ Manager, drag and drop departments to reorder them, or use the "Sort Order" numeric field. Departments with a lower sort order number appear first. This allows you to place high-traffic departments at the top for quick access.

Editing and Deactivating

Click on a department to edit its name, code, parent, or sort order. If you need to retire a department, deactivate it rather than deleting it. Deactivated departments are hidden from the POS Terminal and product forms but remain visible in historical reports. Before deactivating, reassign any products in that department to a different department.

Department changes sync to all stores automatically. Allow one sync cycle for changes to take effect at each store location.