Equipment Categories

Equipment Categories organise your inventory into a logical hierarchy that makes it easy to find items, filter lists, generate reports, and apply pricing rules. A well-structured category tree is the foundation of an efficient rental operation.

Accessing the Categories page

Click Equipment in the left-hand sidebar, then click Categories. The page opens with a statistics dashboard at the top and the full category tree below.

Statistics dashboard

The statistics cards at the top of the page give you an instant overview of your category structure:

• Total Categories — The total number of categories in the system, including all levels of the hierarchy.
• Root Categories — The number of top-level categories (those with no parent). These form the main branches of your tree.
• Equipment per Category — The average and maximum number of equipment items assigned to a single category. Categories with very high counts may benefit from further subdivision.
• Maximum Tree Depth — The deepest level of nesting in your hierarchy. For example, a depth of 3 means you have categories nested three levels deep (e.g., Audio > Speakers > Active Speakers).

Hierarchical category tree

Categories are displayed as an expandable tree structure. Click the arrow next to any category to expand or collapse its children. The tree supports unlimited nesting depth, but two to three levels is recommended for usability.

Each category in the tree shows its name, the number of equipment items it contains, and an icon (if assigned). Categories with child categories display the total count of items across all descendants.

Creating a new category

Click the Add Category button at the top of the page. Fill in the following fields:

• Name — A short, descriptive name for the category (e.g., "Active Speakers", "LED Fixtures", "Cable Reels").
• Parent category — Select an existing category to nest under, or leave empty to create a root-level category.
• Description — An optional description explaining what belongs in this category. Visible to users when browsing categories.
• Icon — Choose an icon from the icon library to visually distinguish this category in lists, filters, and the tree view.
• Colour — Assign a colour that appears as a tag or badge alongside the category name. Useful for quick visual identification.

Click Save to add the category. It appears immediately in the tree at the specified position.

Editing existing categories

Click any category in the tree to open its detail panel. You can update the name, description, icon, colour, and parent category. Changing the parent moves the category (and all its children) to the new position in the tree. All equipment items assigned to the category remain assigned after the move.

Deleting categories

To delete a category, open it and click Delete. The system checks for dependencies before allowing deletion:

• If the category contains equipment items, you must reassign them to another category first. The delete dialog provides a dropdown to select the target category for reassignment.
• If the category has child categories, you must delete or move the children first. Categories with children cannot be deleted directly.
• Once a category is empty and has no children, it can be permanently deleted. This action cannot be undone.

Drag-and-drop reordering

You can reorganise the category tree by dragging categories to new positions. Grab the drag handle on any category and drop it onto another category to make it a child, or drop it between categories to reorder at the same level. This is the fastest way to restructure your hierarchy without editing each category individually.

How categories are used across NexusRMS

Categories are referenced throughout the system:

• Equipment list filtering — Filter the equipment list by category to quickly find items in a specific group.
• Project equipment selection — Browse and add equipment by category when building a project.
• Pricing rules — Apply category-level pricing overrides so all items in a category share the same discount or markup.
• Reports and analytics — Generate utilisation, revenue, and maintenance reports broken down by category.
• Combinations/Kits — Assign kits to categories for organised browsing.
• Warehouse stock counts — Run stock counts filtered by category to count one section of inventory at a time.

Tips and best practices

• Set up categories before adding equipment in bulk — It is much easier to assign categories during initial data entry than to go back and recategorise hundreds of items.
• Use two to three levels of hierarchy maximum — Deeper nesting makes navigation slower and filters harder to use. For example: Audio > Speakers > Active Speakers is effective; Audio > Speakers > Active > 12-Inch > Brand X is too deep.
• Keep category names short and consistent — Use a consistent naming pattern (e.g., always plural: "Speakers" not "Speaker") so categories sort predictably and read clearly in filters.
• Review and consolidate categories quarterly — As your inventory evolves, categories that made sense initially may become redundant or too broad. Merge underused categories and split overpopulated ones.
• Assign icons and colours to root categories — Visual cues make the tree faster to scan, especially once you have dozens of categories.

Next steps

Continue to the next article to learn about Combinations & Kits, where you will build pre-configured equipment bundles with the drag-and-drop Kit Builder.