The item definition screenشاشة تعريف الأصناف

Every item you buy, sell or manufacture is a record on one screen: Item definition (Inventory management → Item definition). It is the busiest screen in the product, so this guide walks it panel by panel. The step-by-step version is How to create an item.

Finding an item: the list

Item definition opens on a list of every item, and you open a record from here.

The columns are a useful summary in themselves - Id, Serial, Name, Second name, Status, Purchase account and its currency, Min Qty, Basic unit and Basic unit Symbol - so you can check a whole catalogue's accounts and units without opening anything.

Note the Serial has four segments (01-1-1-1): the three-level family path, then the item's own number within that family. See Item families.

The ribbon carries New, View, Search, Refresh, Preview, Reports, Expand all nodes, Pair RFID and Show all items - that last one reveals items whose status is Stopped, which the list hides by default. If an item you know exists is missing, try it before creating a duplicate.

Type into the filter row under the headers to narrow the list.

The header

Three checkboxes sit under them:

• Service - the item has no stock. Libra stops checking stock levels when you sell it, so a service never goes negative and never blocks an invoice. You can still buy and sell it, and it still carries a price and accounts; it just has no quantity. Fitting, labour and repair lines belong here.
• Modify name in invoice - lets the seller retype the item's name on the sales invoice. Useful when the stored name is a precise technical description (Bonnet BMW 535 2020 white) and the customer's copy should read something plainer.
• PLU Item - the item is weighed. A shop scale prints a barcode that carries the weight or the price inside it, and this flag tells Libra to read it that way. Cheese, fruit, vegetables and anything sold by weight. Without it the barcode is read as a plain code and the quantity is lost.

VAT: three rates, not two

The VAT dropdown offers three values, not a subject/exempt pair:

11 is the current Lebanese rate and is what most goods and all services carry. 0 is for the goods the state has exempted - bread, wheat, barley, flour, the staples. 10 is kept for items on the older rate.

VAT is decided in three places at once - on the item, on the client, and on the supplier - and the invoice is only free of VAT when the rule says so at every level. A client who brings a government exemption certificate is invoiced without VAT even for a subject item. See Key rules.

Quantities and status

The right-hand panel is read-only except for the last two:

Quantity (what you hold now) · On order in (bought, not yet received) · On order out (sold, not yet delivered) · Retained (reserved) · Min Quantity / Max Quantity, which you set yourself and which drive the reorder reports.

Below them, the item's life: Stopped (unusable), Semi active (sell down existing stock, buy no more), Active. Retiring an item is a status change, never a deletion - deleting would take its history with it.

Accounts and units

Sales account and Purchase account, each with its own currency. They arrive pre-filled from the family and can be overridden per item. The currency is the one you price in - set it to USD and "9" on this item means nine dollars.

In the picture the pair is 7011 - Sales of Vat Items and 60111 - Purchases of Goods /Vat Deductible - the standard pairing for a VAT-subject good.

The Units grid underneath is one of the most useful things on the screen, and it has its own guide: How to set up units of measure. In short: one row per unit, exactly one marked Basic unit, and Formula says how many basic units each other unit contains.

The tabs, and what unlocks them

Item definition · Warehouse · Statement · Additional info · Item description · Accumulation · Stock info

Four of them are greyed out until the item is saved, and so are the Price list, Copy Item and Alternative barcode ribbon buttons. That is not a fault: they all need an item id to attach to. Save first, then come back.

• Warehouse - per-warehouse quantities and the item's default warehouse.
• Statement - every movement of this item.
• Accumulation - the components of a bundle. Only meaningful for a bundle item, and only present when Enter accumulated items is switched on - see Items, kits & dismantling.
• Stock info - your own properties (brand, year, model, origin), as Id / Value pairs. It only appears when Show stock info is switched on. See Item categories & stock info.

Item information and financial info

Country of origin · Related to (a sibling item) · Default warehouse · Custom (a customs percentage for an imported item) · Fixed cost · Notes · Link with a Browse button, for a document or an image.

Financial info is read-only history, shown per currency: Average cost, Last Price Cost, Last purchase price, Purch. price before disc. and Last discount %. This is where you look when a margin does not agree with what you expected.

Where the optional features come from

If a field or tab described here is missing, it is switched off rather than absent. The switches live in Inventory parameters → Items - Item categories & stock info shows that screen.