Operations

Allowed Items

Curate which items a business unit can trade in — and understand the rule that an empty list means everything, not nothing.

A warehouse does not sell haircuts and a service branch does not stock paper. Allowed Items narrows a business unit's catalog to the items it actually trades in, so the item picker on that unit's documents offers a short, relevant list instead of the whole company catalog.

Business unit → Stock → Allowed Items: the assigned catalog, the banner that states the current rule, and Add Items.

Where it lives

Navigate to: Operations → Business Units → open a unit → Stock → Allowed Items

The Stock area of a business unit has three sub-tabs: Inventory (what is on hand here), Transfers (what is moving in and out), and Allowed Items (what this unit is permitted to trade at all).

The rule that surprises people

⚠️An empty allowed-items list means EVERY item is available — not none

This is the opposite of how most permissions in Trabalance behave, so it is worth stating plainly. A unit with no assigned items has no restriction: the full catalog appears in its document pickers. The moment you assign the first item, the list becomes a whitelist and only assigned items appear.

The banner at the top of the tab always states which of the two states the unit is in — No restrictions - all items available, or N item(s) assigned — so you never have to infer it from an empty table.

The practical consequence: curating a unit is a decision you commit to. Assigning three items to a unit that previously showed everything immediately hides the rest from that unit's pickers.

Assigning items

Click Add Items

A picker opens listing every item in the business that is not already assigned to this unit.

Search and tick

The search matches item name and SKU. Tick as many as you need — this is a multi-select, not one at a time.

Add

The selected items join the unit's catalog immediately.

Removing is the mirror image: tick rows in the assigned table and a Remove (n) button appears. Removing every item returns the unit to the unrestricted state.

Allowed Items — who can do what

Action	Requires
See the tab	Access to the business unit.
Add Items	Create permission on the unit.
Remove items	Delete permission on the unit.

What the list actually controls

Where the allow-list applies

Surface	Effect
Document item pickers for that unit	Only assigned items appear once the unit is curated.
The Inventories list, filtered to that unit	Stockable items are filtered to the unit's assigned set.
Service and Expense items	Always pass, everywhere. They have no per-unit stock, so an allow-list has nothing to restrict.
A user restricted to units that are all uncurated	No filtering at all — they see the full stockable catalog.

ℹ️Service and Expense items ignore the allow-list entirely

The list restricts stockable items — Product and Material. A Service or Expense item is never held at a location, so it is always offered regardless of what the unit has been assigned. Do not try to hide a service from a branch this way.

The stricter variant used by tills

A paired point-of-sale terminal can be run in a stricter mode where an uncurated unit shows no stockable items rather than all of them — removing the escape hatch above, so a till that has not been given a catalog sells nothing rather than everything. This is a deliberate setting for retail floors, and it is off unless it has been turned on for your business.

Business units — the units this list belongs to
Creating a center — setting a unit up in the first place
Requesting stock — the catalog a unit can request from
Stock overview — per-unit quantities for the assigned items
Item types — which types are stockable and therefore restrictable