Documentation/ Master records and catalogues/ Masters and catalogues: the difference
Masters and catalogues: the difference
The application keeps two kinds of standing data, and they get muddled because both of them are "lists of products". The difference is where they come from: a master is built out of what arrives on your documents; a catalogue is something you supply.
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The rule that separates everything
Masters fill themselves from your documents. The catalogue you load yourself. Everything else follows from that: what fills itself in, what you have to maintain by hand, and what happens when something is wrong.
A new supplier appears in the supplier master because one of their invoices arrived, not because somebody created them. A product appears in the product master because it was on a line. The external catalogue, on the other hand, does not fill itself: it holds your trade references, and if nobody loads them it stays empty.
The five lists
| List | Where it comes from | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|
| Product master | The lines on your documents, plus anything added by hand | Assigning the ERP item to each line. |
| Supplier master | The documents you receive | Identifying the issuer, and holding their payment terms and contact details. |
| Client master | Your sales documents, or an import | Identifying the recipient on sales invoices and delivery notes. |
| External product catalogue | You load it | Offering your own references when filling lines in. |
| Product categories | You create them | Classifying the master's products so they can be analysed. |
What a master is
A master is the single record for something that turns up on a lot of documents. Instead of repeating a supplier's details on every invoice, they are held once and every invoice points at that record.
Which has two practical consequences. The good one: correct the record and the value is corrected everywhere. The one that makes work: the same supplier can come in twice, with their name written differently, or their tax number read wrongly, and then there are two records where there should be one. That is what merging is for.
The product master works the same way. An item that arrives with two different descriptions creates two products, and your purchasing figures get split in half.
What the external catalogue is
The external catalogue is your list of trade references: the things you sell or handle, with your name for them, your code, your unit and your VAT rate. It has nothing to do with what a supplier's document says.
Its job is the opposite of a master's: instead of collecting what arrives, it offers what you want typed. When you fill in a sales delivery note line, the description and packaging drop-downs come from it.
Which is why it is called external: it is external to the document. The name your supplier uses and the name your business uses need not match, and the catalogue is where yours lives.
Categories, which are neither
Categories, families, raw materials and cost centres, are not a list of products: they are the classification applied over the product master. You create them once, by hand, and then you assign them.
Without them the master still works, but reports grouped by family or by cost centre come out empty. It is set-up work, not day-to-day maintenance.
Which one you touch when
| Situation | Where it gets settled |
|---|---|
| A line cannot find the ERP item | Product master: add the item or correct its reference code. |
| The same item appears under two names | Product master: merge the duplicates. |
| You need to send an order by email or WhatsApp | Supplier master: fill in the contact details. |
| Due dates are not being worked out | Supplier master: set the payment method and terms. |
| The description drop-down on a sales delivery note is empty | External catalogue: load the references. |
| A report by family comes out with nothing in it | Categories: create them and assign them to the products. |
The order to set it up in
The order matters, because some things depend on others:
- Categories first. Families, then raw materials, which hang off a family, then cost centres. With no categories created, a product's drop-downs come up empty.
- Suppliers and clients. These can be imported from Excel, which saves waiting for documents from all of them.
- Products. They will build up on their own from your documents; the work is giving them categories and merging whatever duplicates turn up.
- The external catalogue, only if you raise sales delivery notes or invoices with references of your own.