A product's type says what kind of thing it is, and the rest of the system takes its cues from the answer. There are three:
- Purchased — bought in and, ordinarily, stocked: raw materials, goods for resale, consumables. Procurement orders it, receipts shelve it, its lead time is the purchase lead time, and the replenishment worklist (§5.6) answers its shortages with purchase orders.
- Manufactured — made by you, from a bill of materials (§6.9): finished goods and sub-assemblies. Its lead time is the manufacturing lead time, and its shortages are answered with work orders (Chapter 10). A manufactured product with no active bill of materials is bought instead — the system will not pretend to make what it has no recipe for.
- Service — no stock, ever: labour, consultancy, delivery charged as a line. Services are sold and purchased like anything else but hold no balance, appear in no stock enquiry, and need no warehouse. Time Tracking (Chapter 9) bills hours through a service product — if you enable it and find one already waiting in your catalogue, that is the one.
The tracks stock flag on the record follows the type's logic — services never track, stocked goods do — and it, not the type alone, is what Inventory reads: a purchased product you choose not to track (wrapping paper, say) sells and buys happily while holding no balance and troubling no count.