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When to use this. Compliance categories are admin reference data that sit behind the Compliance module. You create them once in Admin, and they then appear as a dropdown choice whenever a user creates a certificate or compliance standard. Set these up before you start creating certificates. Categories classify by product type (e.g. Textiles, Footwear), while groups classify by purpose (e.g. Sustainability, Chain of Custody) — they are separate resources.

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The workflow

Compliance categories are prerequisites for the Compliance module. The typical path is to create your category vocabulary, optionally assign user-defined IDs for import/export alignment, and then reference categories from certificates and standards.
1

Create the categories

POST /api/compliance-categories with an array of one or more categories. Each category needs only a name; add a userDefinedId if you need to match against an external system.
2

List and verify

GET /api/compliance-categories to confirm all categories are in place. Filter by State, Names, or Search if you have a large vocabulary.
3

Retrieve a single category

GET /api/compliance-categories/{id} to inspect usedInStandard and usedInCertificates — these counters tell you whether a category is safe to delete.
4

Retire or remove

PUT /api/compliance-categories/{id} with state: "inactive" to stop offering the category to new certificates without losing history, or DELETE /api/compliance-categories/{id} to hard-delete it (blocked if usedInStandard > 0 or usedInCertificates > 0).

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Walkthrough

Create a compliance category for Footwear. The body is an array — one or many categories are created in a single all-or-nothing transaction.
The response wraps the created categories in the standard envelope. Hold onto each id — you will need it when updating or deleting individual categories.

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Field reference

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Roles & permissions

Managing compliance categories requires the CompanyAdmin and Compliance Admin roles on a designer (brand) account. Supplier accounts do not manage a brand’s compliance vocabulary. The Compliance module itself requires a Professional license subscription.

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When things go wrong

Errors use the standard envelope (status: "error", a code, and error.details[]). Key cases to handle:
  • 409 Conflict — DELETE is rejected when usedInStandard > 0 or usedInCertificates > 0. Check the counts with GET /api/compliance-categories/{id} first, then reassign or remove the references before deleting.
  • 400 validation_error — name is required; state: "deleted" is rejected on POST and single-item PUT.
  • 404 resource_error — the id does not exist within your organisation.
See Errors & responses for the full list of codes and how to resolve them.

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What to call next

Style categories

A parallel category vocabulary that organises styles — set these up alongside compliance categories for a consistent admin structure.

Item categories

Category classification for items (materials, fabrics, trims).

Groups

Compliance groups organise certificates and standards by purpose, e.g. Sustainability or Chain of Custody — the sibling resource to categories.

Size ranges

Another admin reference dataset needed before product data can be created.