Setup

Setting up Tracking Categories

Tracking categories can be applied to Sales or Purchases in Xero to refine your Xero Financial Reports.

Overview

Xero provides tracking categories to 'tag' line items in Xero to aid reporting.

Cin7 allows for one tracking category to be applied to each line item. These can be used in combination with Alternative GL Accounts, or entirely separately.

Before reading this article it may help to read Setting Up Alternative GL Accounts, and Assigning Alternative GL Accounts.

Setting up Tracking Categories

In Cin7, tracking categories are created using the same functionality as Alternative GL Accounts. This means that you have two choices:

• Append your tracking categories to Alternative GL Accounts.
• If you don't use Alternative GL Accounts, add tracking categories to blank Alternative GL Accounts.

To add tracking categories:

1. Log in to the system as an administrator.
2. Hover over your username, top right, and click Settings.
3. Select the Accounting section
4. Click Alternative GL Accounts.
5. Either pick an Alternative GL Account, or create a new account by clicking Add New.
6. Enter the Tracking Category into the Tracking Categories Name field, and option into the Tracking Categories Option field.
   You must enter the exact spelling that is in Xero - watch out for spaces and special characters.
7. Click Update

If you are using only tracking categories and accounts, then you can leave all other optional fields blank.

Tracking categories do not work independently of each other in Cin7. This means that for each new combination of Alternative GL Accounts, category and option, you will have to create a new Alternative GL Account.

As an example, say I have two sales accounts, Wholesale and Retail, and I want to use two categories 'Fashion' and 'Gifts'. In summary, my GL accounts would look like this:

Note that for each variation a new Alternative GL Account is created. Say you have 10 accounts, which can be tracked with 10 categories which also have 10 options, this would equate to 1000 Alternative GL Accounts being created - clearly not feasible!

In this situation we would encourage you to think carefully about why you need such detail in Xero - perhaps the reporting you once did in Xero can be done using Cin7's own comprehensive reporting tools.

FAQs