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Harmstra

Why do we have all those different types of categories? For a product I can (have to) define:

  • Product Category  (Sales -> Product Categories & Attributes -> Product Categories )

  • Public Product Categories (Sales -> Product Categories & Attributes -> Public Product Categories )

  • Pos Product Categories (Point of Sale-> Pos Product Categories)

It's a lot of work to create every category three times, because I want them to be the same on all three places. 

First I'd like to know why these three types of categories do exist, and second, I'd like to know if there's a way to keep them synced, e.g. only create a category or sub category once

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Rick

I would really like to know this answer too!

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Els Van Vossel (evv)
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The Product Category (or Internal Category as it is called in V8) is used to define the default expense and income accounts (and stock accounts for valuation). You can define a product category according to the way in which you want to see your turnover in Odoo, e.g. to replace separate income / expense accounts. Usually, you create the product categories from an accounting / reporting point of view.

The Public Product Categories are used to group products on your website. These categories are not the same as the product categories, because they tend to be created from a different point of view. The way in which you display your reporting, does not necessarily comply with the way you want to classify products for your customers.

Example: you define a Product Category Printers. On your website, however, you would like your customers to be able to search for laser printers, inkjet printers, etc. Therefore, you define Public Product Categories to make this classification work.

The Pos Product Categories are used to classify your products in your point of sale. The categories you define, will be displayed at the top of your POS screen.

Product Categories are mandatory in Odoo. For the other two categories, you can choose to use or to not use them. They have to be created separately, but you can import them from a csv file. The structure can be as simple or as complex as you like or need.

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David Béal
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@els, we could have the same result with all in the same table:

- use domain to partition different use

- use boolean to share a categorie for different use.

IMHO, Odoo is a clever application, but on this matter, not so clever.

Then to make things easier, we have to code this kind of modules

https://github.com/OCA/pos/tree/8.0/pos_remove_pos_category

my 2 cents

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Els Guns (osadmin.be)
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For anyone that might be interested in a small module that sort of links these 3 categories > https://www.osadmin.be/about/odoo-development/why-are-there-3-product-category-types-in-odoo/.

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Iming Chan
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This is the most ridiculous design logic I have ever seen!  Now I have to go back and assign Public and POS product categories to each of 300+ items in our database!  Product/Internal Category (found under "Accounting" tab in Warehouse > Products) should be used for website and POS by default unless specified in those fields!  Afterall, a product assigned as "Dog Food" under Internal/Product category is unlikely to be "Cat Food" under Public/POS category!

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Ermin Trevisan

Your comment on the design logic shows me that you did not understand Els's very good explanation or you do not know real world examples which do have more than dog food and cat food as categories. It needs more effort though as long as you do not write some code to make it easier in your particular case.

Iming Chan

Ermin, we are pet supplies business and the example used is ligitimate in our case. Clearly you prefer inefficiency and triple-handling! Please explain why the current design is best when you want to use POS and have a webstore? Assigning the same category across 3 separate product fields! I haven't even talk about the synchronisation between those separate categories after you have added/removed a category!

Ermin Trevisan

Odoo (as any other ERP system which offers enough flexibility to cover more than simple business models) is not a pet supplies business solution and it is not a preconfigured simple purchase/store/sell process solution. Of course this is not really convenient in a simple business model, but you are free to define your own module/customization to fit your particular business needs and to make the process of entering and maintaining data easier.