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Product Categories

How Product Categories organize your ArcSite catalog in the User Site, the field app, and on output documents.

What Categories do

Categories are the top-level organizational structure for your product catalog. Every Product, Product Group, and Bundle belongs to exactly one Category. Categories appear:

  • As tabs at the top of the Products page in the User Site.

  • As sections in the field app's product picker, in the order you set them.

  • As groupings on output documents (proposals, takeoff summaries, reports).

Common Category structures include "Materials, Labor, Services" (function-based), "Wood, Metal, Hardware" (material-based), or vertical-specific groupings like "Fence Panels, Posts, Gates, Hardware."

How to manage Categories

Categories are managed in the User Site under Advanced Settings > Products. From there you can:

  • Create a new Category โ€” give it a name and it becomes available as a destination for new Products and Bundles.

  • Rename a Category โ€” the name update flows through to the field app and output documents. Existing Products and Bundles keep their assignment.

  • Reorder Categories โ€” drag and drop to change the order. Put the Categories your team uses most at the top. The order set here is the order users will see in the field app.

  • Delete a Category โ€” only available for empty Categories. Move or delete the Products and Bundles inside before deleting the Category itself.

Best practices

  • Match your team's vocabulary. If your sales team calls them "fence sections," that's the Category name โ€” not "Linear Bundles."

  • Order by frequency, not alphabet. The most-used Categories at the top saves taps in the field.

  • Don't over-segment. If a Category contains fewer than 3 items, ask whether it really needs to be its own Category.

  • Categories aren't sub-folders. ArcSite supports one level of Categories โ€” there are no nested sub-categories. If you need finer organization within a Category, use Product Groups or naming conventions instead.

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