A retail business generally deals with a variety of items under the same roof. At times it also functions as an agent for stocking and selling items on commission basis. In these situations, the stock items are classified and displayed in an organised manner for easy identification and quick access for the customers. For example, in an apparels showroom, items are broadly classified as men's wear, kid's wear, etc. Within each section, the dresses would be categorised as formals and casuals. Each of these can further be classified into dresses as trousers or shirts. On the other hand, classification can be based on the brands also. That is, all merchandise belonging to a particular brand may be grouped together. These arrangements are done to attract customers as well as increase sales by creating an appeal.

Shoper 9 facilitates classification of items in a similar manner as the business does for the merchandise display. Additionally, reports can be generated based on these classifications, thus enhancing the ability to decide on the merchandise mix. This ensures that the business processes need not be changed to adapt to the product.

In Shoper 9, a stock item can be classified using a mixture of hierarchical and non-hierarchical structures providing flexibility to identify it in multiple ways. The product supports up to five levels of primary classification and 32 different item-attributes. In addition to the above, two types of top level grouping of items are also available. The top level is the super classification consisting of two types; followed by two types of item classifications and item sub-classifications; item size/Pack/UOM and 32 different item analysis codes. For example, consider a retail textile business in which a Department or Buyer is defined as super classifications, while a product or brand is defined as item classifications 1 & 2, style & shade being the item sub classification 1 & 2 and size for item size/pack/UOM. The examples of analysis codes may be fibre, shade, etc. Apart from this definition, Shoper 9 allows to define captions for sub-classifications 1 & 2, blank captions for sub-classifications and captions for analysis codes. All information relating to the classifications are catalogued prior to the creation of the stock item master.

Apart from the stock item classifications, Shoper 9 supports the definition of five types of classifications for retail customers to be used in master creation. Similarly, the application allows definition of five types of customer profiles. An example of the classification is the customer age group data and the profile is any other attribute to be captured for the customer.

Reports in Shoper 9 generated on the basis of defined classifications provide adequate information to the user. An example is the attribute wise current stock report generated in POS. Other classification based reports that are generated relate to the sales, purchase, etc., eliminating the need to know the SKU details and providing varied information to the user. Reports generated on the basis of classification in HO relate to information under the various heads of stocks, sales, comparison, size-wise, MIS, consolidated, catalogues and Goods Inwards.