Item Groups

An Item Group is the category your items belong to — Raw Material, Finished Goods, Services, Components, Spare Parts. Use Item Groups to:

Apply default tax, accounts and pricing across many items at once
Filter inventory reports by category
Restrict users to specific groups
Build a tree-structured catalogue your customers and team can browse

Where to manage

Item Group in the Awesome Bar → list view. ERPNext seeds a few defaults (All Item Groups, Products, Services, Raw Material).

Create a new Item Group

Item Group → New:

Field	What
Item Group Name	"Office Supplies", "Spare Parts", "Software Licenses"
Parent Item Group	For tree structure
Is Group	Yes if it will have children; No if it's a leaf for actual items
Default Income Account	Optional — items in this group default to this account on Sales Invoices
Default Expense Account	Optional — items default to this on Purchase Invoices
Item Tax Template	Optional — auto-applies tax per group

Tree structure

Item Groups form a tree. Common shape:

All Item Groups (root)
   Products
       Raw Material
       Work in Progress
       Finished Goods
       Spare Parts
   Services
       Consulting
       Maintenance
       Support
   Trading Goods
       Brand A
       Brand B

An Item is assigned to exactly one leaf. Reports can roll up the tree.

Default inheritance

When you create an Item, fields inherit from its Item Group:

Default Income Account
Default Expense Account
Item Tax Template
Default Warehouse

The Item's own fields override the group if set.

Item Groups in reports

Most inventory and sales reports can group by Item Group:

"Sales by Item Group this quarter"
"Stock value by category"
"Top-selling group year-over-year"

Restricting users

For users who should only see certain groups:

Open the User → User Permissions
Add: Allow Item Group = [specific groups]
Save

The user can only see items in those groups in lists and reports.

Common situations

Products vs Services — top-level split; services have Maintain Stock = No
Brand-based catalogue — sub-groups per brand under "Trading Goods"
Regulated items — own Item Group with Item Tax Template = "Exempt" or special tax rules
Internal-only items — group "Internal" not exposed to portal users

Renaming and merging

You can rename freely — items follow. Merging: move items from old group to new, then disable old.

Website / portal display

If you sell online via Webshop, Item Groups become the catalogue navigation. Plan the tree with both internal and external use in mind:

Internal team navigates: Raw Material → Spare Parts → ITEM-042
Customers navigate: Products → Spare Parts → Brand A → ITEM-042