Question
How do product categories differ from reporting categories?
Solution
Product categories and reporting categories have different purposes in ROLLER.
Product categories can help you organize and manage your products, including finding bookings or sales related to similar products.
Reporting categories enable you to categorize your products with General Ledger (GL) codes for accounting purposes. This can include grouping reporting data by GL code to make it easier to analyze financial information.
Product categories and reporting categories are created in different areas in ROLLER and are not linked in any way.
Product categories
Product categories are used to group similar products together. For example, you may want to group products by activity or attraction type, groups, parties or food and beverage. They allow you to:
Set up, manage and group your products by category in the progressive checkout
Find what you're looking for when creating new bookings in Venue Manager
Search and filter bookings by product categories using the daily capacity, calendar and runsheet
Filter report views by product categories
If using product categories to filter booking or reporting views, make sure when you add a new product to ROLLER, you also add it to its product category to keep your filtered results accurate.
To set up your product categories, from Venue Manager, go to Products > Categories.
Reporting categories
Reporting categories are useful if you want to group reporting data for multiple products under a particular reporting category and GL code. Each reporting category is assigned to a GL code and helps with grouping products together for ease of reconciliation when reporting.
For example, you may want to create reporting categories using GL codes for parties, season passes, weekday admissions, weekend admissions, food and beverage or merchandise.
They allow you to:
Group transactions by GL codes when using key reports in ROLLER.
Map transactions in ROLLER with other accounting systems you use by creating reporting categories with the same GL codes in ROLLER.
Reporting categories appear in the following key reports in ROLLER.
Detailed Product Sales report
Revenue Recognition report
Trial Balance
Ledger Summary report
Xero export
If using reporting categories, you must assign all products to a reporting category for your reporting to be effective.
To create your reporting categories, from Venue Manager, go to Reports > Reporting categories.