The Contract Category field allows you to record information relating to the expenditure code of a contract. The Category field can be configured with specific values for your organisation. It allows you to specify a hierarchy level of values so that your cost centre and account code structure can be configured and applied to contracts.
Typically the Category field holds finance system related information, the example below shows typical entries for the Category field, you can see that categories and sub categories can be maintained, there are no limits to how many levels of sub categories that can be added.
Fig 1 - Category Field
To view the values of the category field navigate to Configuration => General Configuration => Define Value Sets
Expand the Contract entry to display the Contract Category folder, expand the folder to view the existing values for the field, click the arrow arrow to view further sub categories.
Fig 2 - Contract Category Value Set
You can add new or delete unwanted values or adjust/rename existing ones, please refer to the Value Sets article for more information on how to achieve this. the field will allow you enter as many values as you require, the hierarchy structure uses a 'Parent' and 'Child' logic so for the above example, 'Fuels, Lubricants & Gases' is the Parent value and 'Gasses' is the Child value.
With this type of field there is a control setting held within the Manage Account Configuration screen which allows you to either allow or prevent Users from selecting a parent value in this field. If you have specified category sub values then you can force your users to select these by making this setting to 'No' - this will prevent your Users from selecting a 'Parent' value in the field, they will always choose a 'Child' value. If you have the setting set to 'Yes' then it means that you users can select the more generic 'Parent' value.
Fig 3 - Category Control Setting
TIP - This setting is only enforced if you do have hierarchy values, if you have only 1 level of values then this setting does not need to be altered.