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Organize Inventory
Organizing inventory makes it easy to identify and report on which kinds of items sell best, to view entire groups of items at once, and to set up items for ticket printing. After assigning items to departments, categories, and suppliers, you can manage these groups and use them to search the Item List.
To learn how to organize item shortcuts on the register, visit our Item Shortcuts article.
To understand how departments and categories in ShopKeep impact inventory management, let’s define what they are, look at a few examples, and review how they are used.
Departments are groups of items used for organizing inventory, reporting, and ticket printing. Categories are subgroups within departments. Each department has a unique set of categories. Note: Departments and categories cannot be renamed, only deleted.
Examples of departments and their categories:
Department
Categories
Hot Drinks
Coffee, Tea, Cocoa
Entrées
Burgers, Pasta, Chicken
Men’s Clothing
Pants, Dress Shirts, Sweaters
Organize inventory items into departments and categories to:
Quickly search the Item List for a specific set of items.
Filter the Sales by Item report to only display certain types of items.
Assign collections of items to Printer Groups for ticket printing instead of doing so one item at a time.
If you have questions about departments and categories, visit our Inventory FAQ.
Suppliers
To understand how suppliers in ShopKeep impact inventory management, let’s define what they are, look at a few examples, and review how they are used.
Suppliers are the vendors from whom the business gets its items.
For businesses with multiple locations, each ShopKeep store uses, by default, a separate set of suppliers managed independently from the BackOffice of that location. If stores are linked, the same suppliers can be used across locations by enabling multi-store suppliers. Read our article on multi-store suppliers for more information.
Examples of items and their suppliers:
Item
Supplier
Bottled Water
Grocery Supply Co.
T-Shirt
USA Shirts
Sheet Set
Bedding and More
Assign suppliers to inventory items to:
Quickly search the Item List for items from a particular supplier.
See which specific suppliers’ products generate the most sales with the Sales by Supplier report.
Assign items to departments, categories, and suppliers to organize the inventory of the business from BackOffice or the iOS ShopKeep Register app (must be on v4.0 and above). For large inventories (50+ items), we recommend using Bulk Management to create or modify items.
Visit the Item List in BackOffice or from the iOS ShopKeep Register app.
In BackOffice, click ‘Items’ and select ‘Item List’. In the iOS ShopKeep Register app (v4.0 and above, Business Owners and BackOffice Managers only), select ‘Manage Items’ from the Main Menu.
View all existing departments and categories, see how many items are assigned to each, and delete those that are empty all from the Departments & Categories page in BackOffice. Note that departments and categories cannot be renamed, only deleted.
In BackOffice, click ‘Items’, then ‘Departments & Categories’.
Scroll down to view information about each department and category.
Click to Enlarge
Each section begins with the name of a department (e.g. ‘Bakery’) followed by: Category | Name of each category within the department. Item Count | Number of unique items assigned to each category. To view the specific items in each department or category, follow the steps here.
To delete an empty department or category, click ‘Delete’, then 'Yes' to confirm the deletion.
If a department or category contains items, first follow the steps here to reassign the items.
The default ‘General’ department and ‘General’ category within each department cannot be deleted.
Department and category names cannot be edited. Instead, assign all items to a different department or category, then delete the empty one.
Manage Suppliers
View a list of existing suppliers, add new suppliers, edit supplier names, and delete suppliers all from one BackOffice screen.
For businesses with multiple locations, each ShopKeep store uses, by default, a separate set of suppliers managed independently from that location’s Suppliers screen. If stores are linked, the same suppliers can be used across locations by enabling multi-store suppliers. Read our article on multi-store suppliers for more information.
In BackOffice, click ‘Items’, then ‘Supplier List’.
Note: If a supplier has items assigned to it, deleting it will automatically unassign the items. Follow the steps here to assign the items to a new supplier.
The Item List shows every stock item added to inventory with details such as cost, margin, markup, and quantity on hand. From BackOffice or the iOS ShopKeep Register app (must be on v4.0 or above), you can browse inventory, search and sort to find specific items, view details of individual variants, add new items, and edit existing ones.
Visit the Item List in BackOffice or from the iOS ShopKeep Register app.
In BackOffice, click ‘Items’ and select ‘Item List’. In the iOS ShopKeep Register app (v4.0 and above, Business Owners and BackOffice Managers only), select ‘Manage Items’ from the Main Menu.
An overlay with the ‘Name’, ‘Cost’, ‘Price’, ‘Margin’, ‘Markup’, ‘Quantity’ and ‘Total Value’ of each active variant appears. Click any header with arrows to sort the table.
If editing the item, make changes and select a save option.
Click to Enlarge
To delete the item, click ‘Delete’, check the box to delete the item in all linked locations (optional for multi-location accounts), and select ‘Continue’.
If a deleted item is re-added later, labels printed for the original item must be reprinted. Deleted items appear on sales reports for dates prior to deletion but not on certain other reports. Visit our Inventory FAQ to learn which reports are not supported.
Deleting items in all linked locations is available for merchants with multiple linked locations and is only visible to the Business Owner in BackOffice.
Need to download your inventory? Export stock items, then open the export in spreadsheet software. To view items by department, category, or supplier, manually sort the spreadsheet by the relevant column.
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