Choosing Your Business Type
Twenty-six business types across eight categories. Picking the one that sounds most like you prefills every Workflow answer — and you can change any of them.
Navigate to: Settings → Company → Workflow → Business type
The first step of Workflow is a gallery of business types. You are not choosing a plan or a template you are stuck with — you are telling Trabalance which set of sensible starting answers to load into the seven sections that follow. Every one of them stays editable.
What Picking One Does
| It does | It does not |
|---|---|
| Prefills every answer in the seven sections with defaults chosen for that kind of business. | Change anything about your business today. Nothing is provisioned until you apply on the last step. |
| Unlocks the rest of the step rail — the sections stay disabled until a type is chosen. | Lock you in. Pick a different type later and the prefills change; answers you gave explicitly are kept. |
| Suggest a default name for what you call your customers, which you can overwrite in the Identity section. | Enable or disable any module you pay for. Modules are a separate setting. |
Not Sure Which One You Are?
Each card carries a Sounds familiar? link. Open it and you get the problems that kind of business usually arrives with, in plain language. It is often faster to recognise your own week in that list than to reason about the label on the card. If none of them fits, General / Other is a real, supported choice — it prefills conservative defaults and leaves the sections to you.
The Twenty-Six Types
| Category | Business types |
|---|---|
| Commerce | Retail · Restaurant / Food Service · eCommerce / Online Store · Wholesale / Distribution · Manufacturing |
| Projects & Contracts | Construction / Contracting · Professional Services / Consulting · Media / Creative Agency · Oil & Gas / Energy Services |
| Subscription & Membership | Software / Subscription Business · Gym / Membership Business · School / Education |
| Health & Care | Hospital / Clinic · Pharmacy |
| Hospitality & Services | Hotel / Guest House · Salon / Spa / Beauty · Auto Repair / Workshop · Event Services / Equipment Rentals · Logistics / Transport |
| Agriculture & Primary | Agriculture / Farming |
| Funds & Community | NGO / Nonprofit · Church / Religious Organization · Microfinance / Lending |
| Digital & Distribution | Airtime / Data / Payments Agent · Real Estate / Property Management · General / Other |
What A Type Actually Decides
The type you pick supplies a starting answer to each of the seven sections. In practice the defaults differ most on these axes:
| Axis | What varies by business type |
|---|---|
| How you get paid | At the point of sale, on credit terms, from a third-party payer, or on a recurring schedule. |
| Whether you hold stock | And whether those items carry batches, lots or expiry dates. |
| What happens between buying and selling | Nothing, full production from materials, recipes consumed by a sale, costs accumulating over a season or batch, or parts-and-labour costed per job. |
| How bills are checked | Full three-way matching against a purchase order and a goods-received note, order-and-bill only, or a person approving each bill. |
| How your team is paid | Whether tips, commissions, field advances or timesheets are part of the picture. |
| How you follow up | The matching mode for incoming payments, and the style of reminders for overdue customers. |
A business type is a starting point, not a category you are filed under. Two retailers that answer the sections differently end up with different settings, and that is the intent — the questions are the truth, the type is only the head start.
Changing It Later
Pick a different card at any time. The gallery re-prefills the sections, but every question you answered explicitly keeps your answer. The change is not live until you go back to Review & Apply and apply again, and the new apply is recorded as its own version.
Related
- Workflow — the whole flow and all seven sections
- Review and apply — what changes, and when