Categories are a way to track your service mix by overarching groups. Common examples are "Tires", "Maintenance", "High Performance" e.g., but you can create whatever and however many categories as you wish.
Find the "Categories" page on Account Settings. Categories are Account Level, not Shop Level, in order to track common types of services across an entire organization (including multishops).
You may add as many categories as you wish, as well as rename existing ones. Note that currently an existing category cannot be deleted, in order to maintain historical records. Likewise, if you change the name of an existing category, it will update the name on all services to which it was previously assigned.
Once you have your list of desired Categories, you can assign them to individual services on any repair order.
Categories get assigned to individual services. To view and select a category, click the View Financials modal for the service:
You may also review and assign the service categories in the Close RO modal, for ease:
For shops that don't care strongly about categories, you can simply leave these selections set to "None".
For shops that want to track every service, you can make Categories required on the same settings page you create them:
When this box is checked, a staff member cannot close a job unless every service has a selected category:
Automated intelligence is applied to Categories to minimize the effort making these selections.
You may pick a category when you create a canned job:
If the service already has a selected category, the Category drop down menu will already be populated. (You can always change it.)
If the service does not yet have a category, and you select one when you can it, then the Category selected will be added to the service automatically.
You may select and/or change a category when you edit a canned job:
But you don't need to go through your existing canned jobs if you prefer not to. Any service on any repair order that comes from a canned job will apply the Category selected on the service back to the canned job automatically (as long as the canned job category hasn't already been set).
Thus your canned jobs will "learn" categories just by using them, same as they "learn" additional vehicles to which they are matched.
Likewise categories are carried across Past Services and Recommendations. Essentially once a service has a category, it will remember that category and populate it on subsequent repair orders for you.
As time goes along, you will only need to select a category on brand new services you write.
Category information may be examined in the Reports UI, accessed easily on any device (including mobile) to see how you're doing within service segments: