Items overview

Items are the objects you buy (materials), make (parts), or sell (products) to a customer. They are critical to most aspects of Augno.

What are items?

An item record defines:

• Identity: SKU (or part number), description
• Commercial value: default sell price, cost basis
• Operational behavior: product line/category, inventory
• Usage rules: whether it is sold, shipped, or treated as service/credit/shipping

Why do they matter?

Items are used across almost every workflow:

• Sales orders: line items, pricing
• Purchasing: line items, costing
• Inventory: receipts, allocations, on-hand/available tracking
• Manufacturing: production steps and consumption
• Shipping & invoicing: what gets fulfilled and billed
• Analytics: revenue, volume, margins, and product-line performance

Core concepts

• SKU is the operational key: Teams search, quote, pick, and report by SKU constantly.
• Category and product line drive behavior: They influence organization, filtering, unit behavior, pricing, and reporting rollups.
• Units are not just display: Unit configuration affects ordering, conversions, pricing-per-unit, and inventory math.
• Price and cost serve different jobs: Sell price drives revenue; cost supports margin and planning decisions.
• Product type changes workflow impact: Products have six types: sale, service, shipping, credit, return, and tax; each behaves differently in orders and financial flows.

Getting started

Before creating items, you need to define units, unit groups, and item categories.

Units

Default units are available out of the box. Units are classified by type (e.g. grams are mass, weeks are time). Each type has a base unit that all other units in that type convert to. For example, the time base unit is hours. To convert any unit to its type's base unit, use:

# Calculation for converting any arbitrary unit to the unit-type's base unit
base_unit_measure = unit_measure * ratio_numerator / ratio_denominator + offset_numerator / offset_denominator

For minutes to hours this becomes:

# Values
min_measure = 60
ratio_numerator = 1
ratio_denominator = 60
offset_numerator = 0
offset_denominator = 1

# Calculate how many hours are in 60 minutes
hr_measure = 60 * 1 / 60 + 0 / 1 # = 1

To add custom units, create a new unit and set its ratio and offset so it converts to the type's base unit. You can review default and custom units in the Dashboard.

Unit groups

Unit groups are collections of related units that convert to each other. They don't define the conversion math (that comes from units) but how units are used in practice: e.g. which ones show in reports or at checkout for a given category or product line.

Each unit group has:

• Name (e.g. "Socks Units", "Time Units")
• Type: quantity, time, mass, volume, length, temperature, area, or currency
• Base unit: the reference unit reports and rollups use

All units in a group must share the same type; the type cannot be changed after creation.

Unit groups are used for:

1. Unit conversion: Converting between related units (lbs ↔ oz, days ↔ hours, pairs ↔ dozens) for unified reports
2. Category-based measurement: Every category has a unit group, so all items in that category share the same measurement system
3. Pricing: Product-line unit groups can define unit-related pricing and discounts
4. Simplified options: Only a subset of units may be relevant at checkout or for inventory; unit groups limit the choices

Example: Reporting in pairs: If you want inventory for the Sock category in pairs instead of eaches, create a unit group (e.g. Hosiery Units) with base unit pairs and assign it to the Hosiery item category. Reports will then use pairs.

Example: Checkout options: To sell sports socks as single pairs, 10-packs, or 20-packs: define units for each with correct conversions, create a Sports Socks unit group with those units (base unit: pairs), and attach the group to the Sports Sock product line. Checkout and order entry will only show those unit options.

Item categories

With units and unit groups in place, define item categories. There are two separate category types:

• Material categories (material_category): used exclusively by materials
• Product categories (product_category): shared by parts and products

Both types work the same way: a category defines properties and attributes for items in that category. For example, a Yarn material category might have a "Fiber Content" property with attributes like Cotton, Polyester, Wool. A Sock product category might have properties: size, length, style: where the size property has attributes: small, medium, large, extra large.

Categories drive production and sales reports, pricing rules, and checkout experiences.

Next: dive into the three item subtypes: materials (items you purchase), parts (intermediate items you manufacture), and products (finished goods you sell).