Product Categories
Categories are the shelves of your shop. You put products on a shelf, and your customers walk straight to the shelf they want.
In plain words
Imagine a real shop. You do not pile everything on the floor — you have a shelf for drinks, a shelf for snacks, a shelf for t-shirts. A category is one of those shelves. A sub-category is a smaller shelf inside a bigger one: Clothing can hold T-shirts and Hoodies.
Your Telegram bot shows these shelves as menu buttons. No categories means one long list, and a long list is how a shopper gives up.
Where to find it
In the dashboard menu, open Inventory → Product categories.
Make your first category
- Click Add category.
- Type a name. Use the word your customer would use — "Drinks", not "SKU group 4".
- Upload an image if you want a picture on the button in your bot. This is optional.
- Pick a parent category only if this new one lives inside another one. Leave it empty for a top-level shelf.
- Save. The category is now ready to be used on a product.
A category does nothing on its own. You still have to open a product and tick the category on it — see Products.
Many categories at once
If you already have a list in a spreadsheet, use the Import button and upload an .xlsx file instead of typing them one by one. Export does the opposite and gives you the list as a spreadsheet. If you tick some rows first, only those rows are exported; if you tick nothing, you get them all.
Export first, look at the columns, then import. The exported file is the exact shape the importer expects, so copying it is the safest way to build a big list.
Keeping the list tidy
- Use the search box to find a category by name.
- Tick the checkboxes on the left to delete or export several rows together.
- Use the three-dot menu on a row to edit or delete just that one.
- The ? help panel on the page explains categories in the dashboard too.
Deleting a category does not delete its products. The products stay, they simply lose that shelf — so they can disappear from the bot menu until you give them another one.
A simple example
| Category | Parent | What the shopper sees |
|---|---|---|
| Clothing | — | A top-level button in the bot |
| T-shirts | Clothing | A button inside Clothing |
| Hoodies | Clothing | A button inside Clothing |