Definition
A Supplier Item Category is a category for an item as defined by your supplier, rather than being defined by you.
Sometimes these are known as "Purchasing Groups", in that the supplier has grouped, or categorized items, and then will often offer incentives or rules around those groups.
For example, if you're Wile E. Coyote ordering from ACME, you must order at least 5 giant magnets, but must order 20 anvils of any type to satisfy those two separate supplier minimums, which you can specify in StockIQ. Or, perhaps there are special PO numbering rules that you want to apply for differing supplier item categories.
When present, in step 1 of Place Orders, the Supplier Order Summaries you will then see your supplier order recommendations for your orders just as before, but then you will see ADDITIONAL lines for each category from that supplier showing how many items are recommended to be ordered from each supplier item category / purchasing group.
These categories are created by StockIQ using two data feeds in the interface, one called "SupplierItemCategory", and secondly, by populating a SupplierItemCategoryCode in the ItemSiteSupplier data feed.
Contact StockIQ if you'd like to integrate these into your StockIQ configuration.