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Streamline Product Management With Department Settings

Manage parent and sub-departments and use inheritance to apply attributes to your products automatically.

Department Settings help you organize your store, enforce consistency, and reduce manual work. By setting up Parent and Sub-Departments with inheritance, you can apply pricing rules, tax settings, and restrictions automatically — so your catalog stays clean as your store grows.

This guide walks through how to create and manage departments, understand inheritance, and make changes confidently without breaking your setup.

Table of Contents

Create New Parent Department

Parent Departments act as the foundation for groups of related products. This is where you define the core attributes that will “flow down” to everything underneath — saving time and preventing inconsistencies later.

To create a Parent Department:

  1. Navigate to Products and select Departments in the left-hand navigation.

  2. Click Create New in the top right corner.

  3. Select Department.

  4. Enter the Department Name.

  5. Set your attributes, such as:

    • Tax Rates

    • Bottle Deposits

    • Target Margin

    • Age Restrictions

  6. Review your selections and click Create.

💡Tip: Most stores use Parent Departments to lock in rules they don’t want to manage item by item, especially for regulated or high-volume categories.

Create a New Sub-Department

Sub-Departments sit under a Parent Department and help you organize your products with more detail. When you create one, it automatically inherits all attributes from its Parent.

  1. Click Create New in the top right corner.

  2. Select Sub-Department.

  3. Enter the Department Name.

  4. Select the Parent Department from the drop-down menu.

  5. Review the inherited attributes.

  6. Click Create.

Understanding Department Inheritance

Department Inheritance is designed to save time and protect accuracy. Attributes flow top-down through a simple hierarchy:

Parent Department → Sub-Department → Product

That means when you set an attribute at the Parent level, it automatically applies to everything underneath unless you intentionally change it.

💡Tip: Think of inheritance like a waterfall. For example, if you mark the Grocery Parent Department as SNAP eligible, all Sub-Departments (like Canned Goods or Cereal) — and the products inside them — inherit that setting automatically.

How Changing Attributes Works

Attributes set on a Parent Department govern all connected Sub-Departments to keep your store consistent.

Breaking Inheritance

If you change an attribute at the Sub-Department level that conflicts with the Parent, you break inheritance for that specific attribute.

Individual Management

Once inheritance is broken:

  • The Parent Department no longer controls that attribute

  • You must manage it manually for that Sub-Department going forward

This flexibility is intentional — it lets you handle exceptions without undoing your entire structure.

Example: How Inheritance Works in Practice

Here’s a real-world grocery example using the department “waterfall.”

1. Establishing Inheritance

  • Scenario: You have a Parent Department called Alcohol.

  • Action: You set the Age Restriction attribute to 21+ on the Alcohol Parent Department.

  • Result: Your Beer, Wine, and Spirits Sub-Departments automatically inherit the 21+ restriction. No duplicate setup required.

2. Breaking Inheritance

  • Scenario: You start carrying Non-Alcoholic Beer, which does not require an age restriction in your jurisdiction.

  • Action: You open the Non-Alcoholic Beer Sub-Department and change the Age Restriction attribute to None.

  • Result: Inheritance is now broken for all the sub-departments under Alcohol.

3. Managing Sub-Departments Individually Going Forward

Because the inheritance link is broken:

  • If you later update the Alcohol Parent Department Wine, Beer, Spirits, and Non-Alcoholic Beer will not change, since it’s now managed independently.

Edit Department or Sub-Department Attributes

To edit a department:

  1. In the Departments table, hover over the department name.

  2. Click Open.

  3. Adjust the attributes as needed (for example, EBT Enabled or Target Margin).

  4. Changes save automatically.

You’ll see a confirmation message once the update is complete.

⚠️ Important: Department-level attributes override conflicting item-level attributes for products inside that department. Use department changes intentionally to avoid surprises at checkout.

Deactivate and Reactivate Departments

During setup or reorganization, you may end up with departments you no longer need. If a department has zero products, you can deactivate it.

How to Deactivate

  1. Go to Products > Departments.

  2. Open the department you want to deactivate.

  3. Click Deactivate in the bottom-left corner.

  4. Confirm by clicking Deactivate in the pop-up. 

How to Reactivate a Department

  1. On the Departments page, use the Status filter and select Inactive.

  2. Open the inactive department.

  3. Click Reactivate in the bottom-left corner.


✏️Note: You cannot deactivate a department that has active or inactive products linked to it. Move all products to another department before deactivating.