Categories, manufacturers, and tags are three independent dictionaries that attach to a product as a reference to an ID, not as free text. When you create a product via addInventoryProduct, you must supply the relevant IDs; Base will reject or miscategorize products that reference IDs that don’t exist. Make sure these dictionaries are populated before you start uploading product cards (see Uploading Product Data).
Categories
Categories form a tree structure inside an inventory. Each node has a numeric ID you reference from the product.
Deleting a category does not delete the product records themselves. Still, the category tree handling is stricter than it looks at first, and it differs depending on whether you delete via the API or the Base panel:
- Via the API (
deleteInventoryCategory): directly assigned products are unconditionally reassigned to category_id: 0 (“No category”); there’s no destination option. Subcategories are deleted recursively together with the parent and are not promoted up a level; products inside them are also reassigned to category_id: 0 as the recursion reaches each child.
- Via the Base panel: the delete dialog does offer a destination-category dropdown, but only for products directly assigned to the category you’re deleting, not for products in its subcategories. Be careful picking a destination: choosing one of that category’s own descendants doesn’t help, since that descendant gets deleted by the same recursive delete, so those products still end up uncategorized regardless.
Base’s own API reference text for this endpoint doesn’t fully reflect this behavior; treat the description above as the verified source of truth rather than the reference page’s wording. Before deleting a category with children, review or export everything in that branch (the category itself and every subcategory beneath it) so you know exactly which products will end up uncategorized. Manufacturers
Manufacturers are a flat list (no hierarchy) and are paginated at 1 000 entries per page.
Deleting a manufacturer doesn’t leave products with a dangling reference: any product that had it assigned is automatically updated to manufacturer_id: 0 before the manufacturer row itself is removed.
Deleting a tag automatically unlinks it from all products that carry it. You don’t need to manually remove the tag from individual products first.
Before a bulk cleanup
Deleting a category, manufacturer, or tag permanently changes its product links, not the product records themselves. The reassignment happens immediately and can’t be undone, so export your current product-to-category, product-to-manufacturer, and product-to-tag assignments before running any bulk delete operation.
