Invoice tag groups

Settings → Finance & Business → Invoice tag groups is where you define the categories people pick from when they code an invoice or an invoice row: cost types, cost centres, sales registers. A tag group is one category. The tags inside it are the values to choose from.

Who can change it

Only an administrator can open this screen and change anything on it.

The controls on this screen

Across the top of the page

Export: downloads every invoice tag group and its tags as a spreadsheet file named tags.csv, for editing in bulk.

Import: reads a .csv or .xlsx file and shows what it would change before anything is saved (see "Editing in a spreadsheet" below).

Add tag group: opens a form for a new group.

Enable invoice tagging: the organization-wide switch for invoice tagging. It is on by default and saves as soon as you flip it, with a Success message. While it is off, Flowtly stops suggesting tags on incoming invoices, refuses to set default invoice tags on a counterparty, and does not accept a budget that works by tag.

The list of groups

Each group is a card with its name and, when it has one, its Code. A group with no tags shows No tags yet.

Reorder groups: shown when there is more than one group. It switches the list into a drag-and-drop list of the groups. Drag a group to set the order it appears in on this screen, in every tag picker and in the per-group budget report. Click Done to return to the cards.

Add tag (at the foot of each card): opens the tag form for that group. A new tag joins the end of the group.

Inside a card, drag a tag by its handle to put the tags in order. The order is the order every tag picker shows.

Each tag row shows its label, plus any of these that are set: Export name (shown when the name differs from the label), Account (the accounting code), the description, and Owner. A row with an owner who cannot approve invoices also shows a warning that says where invoices with that tag go instead.

The edit button on a card opens the group form. The row menu (More actions) on a tag holds Edit tag and Delete tag.

Name: the group's name. The form cannot be saved without one. Saved with Add for a new group or Save when editing.

Also apply to counterparties: off by default for a new group. When on, the group's tags become available on a counterparty, where they stand in for the tags of that counterparty's costs in budgets. A group that applies to every relation, counterparties included, shows this switch on and locked.

The tag form (Add tag to a group, Edit tag)

Name: the long name, used in exports and printable contexts. Up to 255 characters.

Label: the short text shown in the tag picker and on chips. It is filled in from the name as you type, as lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, until you edit it yourself. It can be at most 32 characters, so a long name needs a label of its own.

Description: what the tag covers, in your own words, shown to people picking the tag. Up to 255 characters.

Accounting code: the book account the tag posts to, as your accountant names it. The Optima export writes it in place of the tag name; leave it empty to export the name. Up to 64 characters.

Sort order: a number that orders the tags. It appears only where the tags cannot be ordered by dragging.

Invoice direction: which invoices the tag can be chosen on. The options are Both incoming and outgoing invoices (the default), Incoming (purchase) invoices only and Outgoing (sales) invoices only. A tag already on an invoice stays there. The field is shown for groups that apply to invoices.

Owner: the person who gives the first approval for an invoice tagged with this value. Only someone with invoice permission is asked; anyone else is skipped and the invoice routes on as if no owner were set. If the owner has not accepted their invitation, or lacks the invoice approver role, the form warns you and invoices with the tag go to everyone who holds that role. The owner is used only by groups applied to whole invoices; for other groups the form says the owner is not used and can be cleared. See Invoice approvers and Invoice approval workflow.

Linked project: a suggestion, not a rule. Choosing the tag on a purchase invoice fills in this project, and choosing the project fills in the tag. Both stay editable. If two tags name the same project, choosing that project fills in neither. Shown for groups that apply to incoming invoices.

Cancel closes the form without saving. Add (new tag) or Save (existing tag) stores it. Name and Label are required; if the server refuses the tag, the form stays open with an error message.

Deleting a tag

Delete tag asks Delete this tag? and then removes it with Delete. It is refused while the tag is still attached to invoices or attachments; remove those references first and try again.

Tagging categories

Tagging categories is a row at the foot of the page, with a Configure button. It opens the separate screen where categories combine tag groups into one labelled field on cost invoices. Categories are optional: without them tagging works as it always has.

Editing in a spreadsheet

Export writes one row per tag, under its group, with the columns id, group, tag, label, order, description and direction. A group with no tags yet is a row with an empty tag. The accounting code and the owner are not in the file.

Import matches rows by id first and then by group and tag name, so a file exported from one organization can be imported into another. The import dialog shows a dry run: how many groups and tags are new, changed or unchanged, and the problems found, with the line of each. Nothing can be applied while a problem remains. Apply changes saves the changes. An import never deletes: a tag missing from the file stays as it is, and the dialog says how many such tags there are.

Example use cases

An administrator creates a Cost centre group and adds one tag per department, so every cost invoice can be coded to a department.
An administrator sets an Owner on the Marketing tag, so invoices carrying it go to the marketing lead first.
An administrator exports the tags, renames and reorders them in a spreadsheet, and imports the file to apply the changes in one step.
An administrator fills in an Accounting code on each tag so the accountant's Optima export carries book accounts rather than tag names.