PSG Solution Categories Explained: How to Find Your Fit

Short answer: the Productivity Solutions Grant is built around a pre-approved list of vetted, mostly off-the-shelf digital tools and equipment, organised two ways at once - by business function and by industry sector. The main functional categories are customer management, financial management, human resources and payroll, and inventory, operations and ERP, with a set of sector-specific solutions alongside them. The reliable way to find your fit is to start from your biggest operational pain, let that point you to a category, and then confirm the specifics against the current official list on GoBusiness. This is educational background, not official advice, and the list changes - so always check the live source first.

How the pre-approved model works, in one idea

Start with the single idea that makes this whole grant easier to understand. The Productivity Solutions Grant works from a pre-approved list. Rather than asking a business to dream up any project it likes and then argue for funding, the scheme points you to a catalogue of solutions that have already been assessed and accepted for support.

• The tools are pre-vetted. These are largely off-the-shelf digital tools and equipment - things many businesses genuinely need - that have been checked in advance.
• Your job is matching, not inventing. You are not designing something new. You are finding the listed solution that matches a real need, and going through the proper process around it.
• Much of the assessment is already done. That is the big difference between this grant and larger, bespoke schemes: a lot of the work of deciding what qualifies already lives in that official list.

Understanding that one fact reframes everything that follows. When we talk about categories, we are really just talking about how that big catalogue is organised so you can navigate it without feeling overwhelmed.

How the PSG list is organised

So how is the list actually laid out? Broadly, the solutions are grouped in two ways at once, and it helps to hold both in your head.

• By business function - the kind of job the tool does, such as managing customers, managing money, managing people, or managing stock.
• By sector - the kind of industry you are in, such as food services, retail, logistics, or construction.

Some solutions are cross-cutting, useful to almost any business no matter its industry. Others are specific to the way a particular sector operates day to day. For the rest of this guide we will walk through the main functional categories one by one, because that is usually the most intuitive way for an owner to think - starting from a job that needs doing. Keep in mind that the exact category names, the groupings, and what sits inside each one are defined officially and can be updated, so treat this walkthrough as a map of the terrain, not a replacement for the current list.

Customer management

The first broad category is customer management. This covers the tools a business uses to keep track of the people it sells to and serves, and to handle the work of winning and keeping them.

• Store customer records in one place instead of a notebook, a spreadsheet, or one person's memory.
• Track enquiries and sales conversations from first contact through to a closed deal.
• Manage bookings or appointments so your calendar is not a source of double-bookings and no-shows.
• Support consistent follow-up so leads do not quietly fall through the cracks.

If the problem you are trying to solve sounds like we keep losing track of customers, or our follow-up is inconsistent, or we have no clear picture of our sales pipeline, this is the category to look at first.

Financial management

The second broad category is financial management. These are the tools that handle the money side of the business - the accounting, invoicing, billing, and financial record keeping that every company has to do whether it enjoys it or not.

• Bring scattered work into one system. A good financial management tool takes work that was being done by hand, or spread across a tangle of separate spreadsheets, and pulls it together.
• Produce invoices and track what you are owed and what you owe, so nothing goes out late or gets lost.
• Keep your books in order so the numbers you are looking at are ones you can actually trust.

For many small businesses this is the most immediately practical category, because the pain is so tangible. If closing the month is a dreaded scramble, if invoices go missing, or if you never quite trust your figures, a financial management tool is aimed squarely at that. As always, which specific products are listed and supported is a matter for the official catalogue.

Human resources and payroll

The third broad category is human resources and payroll. As a business grows past its first handful of people, the admin of employing them grows too, and it can quietly swallow a surprising amount of a manager's week.

• Pay staff correctly and on time, with the calculations handled for you rather than by hand.
• Manage leave and claims without chasing paper forms or email threads.
• Keep employee records in one organised place.

The appeal here is straightforward. Payroll and HR work is repetitive, rule-bound, and unforgiving of small mistakes, which makes it a natural fit for good software. If your team is expanding and the once-simple task of paying everyone and tracking their leave has become a monthly headache, this is the category that speaks directly to that.

Inventory, operations and ERP

The fourth broad category covers inventory, operations, and what are often called enterprise resource planning systems, or ERP for short. This is the group for businesses that make, move, store, or sell physical things and need to keep a firm grip on stock and operations.

• At the simpler end, an inventory tool tracks what you have, what is running low, and what is selling, so you are neither out of stock nor drowning in it.
• At the more comprehensive end, an ERP system ties many parts of the business together - linking sales, stock, purchasing, and finance so information flows through one connected system instead of being re-entered in several places.

If stock levels are a guessing game, or different parts of the business do not really talk to each other, this is the category to explore - while being realistic that the larger systems are bigger projects to adopt.

Sector-specific solutions

Beyond these cross-cutting functions sits a whole world of sector-specific solutions, and this is where the industry grouping we mentioned earlier really comes into play. Alongside the general categories, the list includes tools built for the particular needs of specific industries.

• A food services business has very different daily realities from a retail shop, a logistics operator, or a construction firm.
• There are listed solutions built around those realities - from a point-of-sale system tuned for a busy kitchen to tools aimed at the workflows of a given trade.

The point is that if a general category does not seem to capture what your business actually does, look at whether a sector-specific grouping fits you better. The official list is organised to help you approach it from either direction: by the function you need, or by the industry you are in.

How to work out which category fits

With the main categories laid out, how do you actually work out which one fits your business? The most reliable method is to ignore the catalogue for a moment and start from your own pain, not from the list.

• Ask one honest question: what is the task that is currently costing us the most time, money, or accuracy?
• Name the job: is it chasing and serving customers, managing money, paying and managing people, or handling stock and operations?
• Only then open the list: look at the solutions grouped under that category, and against your sector, to see what is actually available and supported.

Working in this order - need first, catalogue second - keeps you from the common trap of buying an impressive tool that solves a problem you did not really have. It also makes your eventual case stronger. A big reason applications run into trouble is a weak link between the stated need and the chosen solution, one of the themes in why grant applications get rejected. If you are still getting your bearings on the scheme itself, the plain-English Productivity Solutions Grant explainer is a good place to start first.

Why the official list is the only source that counts

There is one more thing that matters more than any category label. Everything described here - the categories, the groupings, the kinds of tools in each - is a way of understanding the terrain, but the terrain itself is defined officially and it moves.

• Solutions are added and removed over time.
• The way things are grouped can be adjusted.
• Support levels attached to the scheme are set by the authorities and change.

That means the only place to confirm what is genuinely on the list today, which products are supported, and under what conditions, is the official source. For this grant that is the GoBusiness website, where the pre-approved solutions are published and kept up to date. Treat this article as the map, and the official list itself as the single source of truth. Never budget, commit, or assume a product is covered based on a category description or a secondhand summary - this one included. Check the live listing first.

Frequently asked questions