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Settings → Catalog is where you set up the building blocks that your products, services, and expenses draw from — categories, variants, brands, and units. Getting these right first makes adding products and expenses faster later.

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Understanding the fields

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Categories & Variant Keys

  • Category name — the department you organize products under (like “Groceries” or “Mobile Phones”). Categories can be nested — use Move under on a category’s menu to nest it inside another, or Move to top level to pull it back out. Drag a category in the list to reorder it among its siblings.
  • Allow fractional quantity (toggle, per category) — turn this on for categories sold by weight, volume, or length (like loose grains or fabric), so the billing screen accepts decimal quantities (0.5 kg) instead of only whole units. Leave off for categories sold as whole pieces.
  • Barcode code — an optional 3-character code (must start with 0, since that’s reserved for your store’s own private codes; 000 is reserved and can’t be chosen) that fills in the “type” segment of barcodes BillBasket generates for products in this category. Leave blank to use the default.
  • Variant keys (Label + machine name + Required) — attached to a category, these define what varies across a product’s variants — for example, a “Clothing” category might have a “Size” variant key, while “Electronics” might have “Storage.” You must set variant keys up on the category before adding a product that needs them — they’re what populate the variant picker when creating that product later. Marking a key Required means every product added under that category must specify a value for it.
  • Values — the actual options under each variant key (e.g. “S,” “M,” “L” under a “Size” key).
  • Base categories — a separate checklist letting you pick which top-level departments from BillBasket’s global category list apply to your store, so your product-category picker only shows relevant departments instead of the entire global tree. Leave everything unticked to browse the full list.

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Brands

  • Brand name — add manufacturer or product brands you sell (e.g. “Samsung,” “Apple”). Once added, a brand becomes available to pick when creating or editing any product — useful for filtering and reporting later.

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Units of Measure

  • Unit name / short code — custom units (like “Box” or “Dozen”) beyond BillBasket’s built-in set (kg, litre, piece, etc.). The built-in units are shown read-only so you don’t accidentally recreate one — BillBasket blocks a custom unit whose name or short code duplicates a built-in or another custom unit.
  • Scope (Product / Service / Both) — controls where a unit shows up: a Product-scoped unit only appears when adding products, a Service-scoped unit only appears for services (like “Hour” or “Session”), and Both makes it available everywhere. Pick Service for time-based units you’ll only ever bill against a service, to keep the product unit list uncluttered.

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Expense Categories

  • Category name — the categories used to classify business expenses. See Tracking expenses for how these are used day to day.

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See it on your device

The Units of Measure page under Catalog settings — one of several Catalog sub-pages alongside Categories & Variant Keys, Brands, and Expense Categories, all listed in the same left-hand menu. Built-in units are shown read-only with a P/S scope badge; Add unit creates a custom one for anything not already covered.

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Try it: Bali Electronics

1

Create a category

Vikram Bali opens Settings → Catalog → Categories & Variant Keys and creates a “Mobile Phones” category for his stock.
2

Add a variant key to the category

Since phones come in different storage sizes, he adds a “Storage” variant key to the Mobile Phones category, so it’ll be available when Deepak adds phone products later.
3

Add a brand

Vikram then opens Settings → Catalog → Brands and adds “Samsung” and “Apple” so they can be picked when creating new phone products.